MMC Keglers travel to St Louis
MMC Keglers travel to St Louis
St.Louis, Missouri (2/7- 2/8) - Martin Guys Come Away With 1st Title! The MMC Bowling team traveled to St Louis this weekend and came away with the Schools first ever bowling title. Keeping true to form in a very different and demanding format, the Ladies team continued to make the cut and came away with another top ten finish. The six ladies worked hard to grasp an 8th place finish in a field filled with tough competition.
The young and talented RedHawk Men rose to the challenge as well and basically dominated in a very professional manner. Saturday morning things seemed about normal. After a solid first set, things got a bit rocky. At one point the men found themselves in 25th out of 42 teams, but with some veteran leadership from Nick Parker and Tyrel York the Redhawks began the march up the ladder to find themselves in 5th place to start Sunday mornings last 16 games of Baker matches. With the tournament shot being very demanding and scores fairly low, the Redhawks paced to hold on to 6th place after the cut to the top 8 teams.
After the field was cut from 42 teams to the top 8, the head to head bracket matches began. Martin drew the 3rd seed and bowling powerhouse Wichita State for their first round. In order to advance to the next round (the final 4), Martin would have to defeat Wichita in a best of 3 Baker match. Wichita had lane choice and decided to start on the right lane. Coach Titus said “Not real sure why they did that I was pretty sure that the left lane was by far the best and all my players thought the same”. With some clutch bowling by the entire team Martin made short work of the powerhouse with 2 straight wins and moved on to face the Big Ten standout Purdue. “Purdue has emerged as a really good program” said Coach Titus. “They have a great coaching staff and some really solid players”. Martin now had lane choice since they were the higher seed. With a definite difference Martin chose the easier of the 2 lanes. After two games it was split 1 to 1 with Martin finishing on their chosen lane for the 3rd game. Redhawks' lane choice and consistent bowling, gave them the win and a chance at local powerhouse Lindenwood College for the title. After losing to Lindenwood earlier in the year, MMC looked forward to the opportunity for some payback. “There was a little bit of an altercation with a player on their team in a previous head to head match with one of our players” “It was really no big deal, but just the same, in the heat of battle some of these guys really don’t need much fuel to ignite a fire” said Coach Titus.
Again, Martin had lane choice and once again there appeared to be a lane bias. After riding the moment from the previous match the Martin Methodist men made a statement with a powerful 258 to defeat Lindenwood in the first game. With one game down the excitement was rising knowing they were one game away from their first championship. Unfortunately, after missing two easy spares the men lost the second game 189 to 196. The Redhawks now returned to the original lane they picked for the final game that determined the champion of the tournament. The Martin Methodist Redhawks grabbed their first bowling title in their 4 short years of existence with a 212 to 169. “I always knew it was coming, it was just a matter of time until everything came together” said Coach Titus.
The Redhawks final regular season competition of the 2008-2009 season will be the Hooiser Classic in Indianapolis, IN on Feb 21-22.