The Ithaca Boys Bowling team traveled to Valley Lanes in Midland on Saturday, February 8th to face St. Louis and Hemlock in a pair of Tri-Valley West showdowns. They would come out of the day 2-0 to maintain their 1 match lead over St. Charles heading into the final weekend of the regular season.
First on the docket for the Yellowjackets (9-1) was St. Louis (2-8). The Yellowjackets would jump out to a quick 10-0 lead, winning both Baker games 182-127 and 218-126. They would follow that up with wins in both Peterson games by the score of 909-737 and 945-804 for the 29.5 – .5 match win.
Ithaca was led by Lucas Gruesbeck 223, 181; Logan Coleman 208, 176; Preston Pitcher 200, 168; and Aaron Warn 195, 187. St. Louis was led by Caleb Noack 205,172; and Hunter Seeley 191, 155.
Match 2 saw Ithaca taking on Hemlock (4-9). Ithaca would win this one 28-2 behind strong performances from Coleman 278, 213; Riley Vernon 201; Warn 196, 176; and Izzy Bauman 167. The Yellowjackets would shoot Baker games of 139-212 to Hemlocks 133-138 and Petersons games of 859-991 to the Huskies 656-550. Coleman would throw the 1st 8 strikes of the final game before missing just a little bit and having to settle for the 278 game. “It has been pretty exciting the last couple weeks,” said Ithaca head coach Wally Schneider. “That’s 2 weeks in a row that we have had a bowler take a string of strikes into the late frames, looking for a possible 300 game. Preston (Pitcher) did it last week and Logan (Coleman) did it this week. Logan looked good, I reminded him a couple times during the run to stay calm and stay under control at the line and he did a great job of doing that but when the strikes start piling up its hard to keep those nerves in check.”
Schneider said, “We came in with a goal today to shoot 975, we did that on our final game of the day with 991. It was a tough shot today and a couple of our best guys and league leaders struggled. But I am really happy that when that happened we had other guys step up. I challenged some of the guys this week to step up and fill some spots where we have been struggling and several responded. Lucas Gruesbeck had his best day of the year, as did Aaron Warn. Izzy Bauman didn’t score quite as well as he would have liked but he looked as good throwing the ball today as I have seen in a while. Really anyone on this team is capable of a big game, at any time. I just have to make sure I have the right guys in the game at the right time, that’s a good problem to have.”
This coming weekend Ithaca will take on Bullock Creek and St. Louis again at Pins in Ithaca. If they can stay clean, they will walk away with their 5th regular season league title.
In other action
St. Louis Boys lost to St. Charles 30-0 in match 2. They were led by Hunter Seeley 180,167; John Mitchell 174 and Cody Hartman 169,167.
Ithaca Girls defeated St. Louis 25-5. St. Louis high scorers were Shannan Mitchell 177,157; Jaden Simmons 168; Danielle Thelen 172.
Ithaca Girls defeated Nouvel CC 28-2. Ithaca was led by Fiona Woodrow 211 and Megan Hunt 178
St. Louis Girls lost to Carrollton 8-22. High scorers for the Sharks were Shannon Mitchell 160,156; and Jaden Simmons 157
TVC West Boys Standings
Ithaca 11-1
St. Charles 10-2
Carrollton 9-3
Valley Lutheran 7-5
Bullock Creek 6-6
Hemlock 3-9
St. Louis 2-10
Nouvel 0-12
TVC West Girls Standings
Bullock Creek 12-0
Ithaca 11-1
Carrollton 6-6
St. Louis 4-8
Valley Lutheran 3-9
Nouvel 0-12
Next week is at Pins in Ithaca at 12:30