Women's Bowling | 3/12/2025 1:52:00 PM
FORT WORTH, Texas — The Bulldogs faced off with some of the best bowling squads in the country over this past weekend (Mar. 8-Mar.9) in the ITC Sectionals Tournament and was able to leave their mark.
This tournament consisted of the top 80 ranked teams across all divisions of college bowling. The Bulldogs entered the tournament ranked 44th after the regular season. The 80 teams are split up into four different sectional locations throughout the country with all teams bowling 32 baker games on Saturday and 32 baker games on Sunday. After the 64 baker games, the top four teams from each sectional location secured a spot in the ITC National Championships tournament.
The Bulldogs got off to a great start on Saturday with a total of 1515 after 8 games, which was good enough to put MC at the top of the standings. The last four games of the morning block were more troublesome and dropped MC to 5th place after the first 16 games, just 71 pins behind 4th place.
MC struggled during the first 16 games of the Sunday morning block, putting together 4 game total of 2,874. After 48 gamee, MC sat in 8th place but now 234 pins out of 4th place and a trip to nationals. It was a hot start to the afternoon block as MC put together a four game set of 832 followed by another four game set of 800. This moved the Bulldogs up to 7th place and cut the deficit from 4th place to only 116 pins. The team continued to battle the last eight games with scores of 658 and 661 in the final pair of four game sets, but the Bulldogs were unable to climd the standings enough and finished in 9th place with a total pinfall of 11641 for the 64 games, averaging 181.89 per game.
"I was beyond pleased with how the team performed," said head coach Mitchell Whitehead. "To be a first-year program with only two players that have sectionals experience and say we were leading the field at one point, in the top five throughout the first 20 games, and in the top 8 for the majority of the weekend was fantastic to see. I was even more impressed with the fight this young team showed on Sunday being down 200 pins to cutting the deficit to only 116 pins with 8 games to go was remarkable. This group of Women worked extremely hard all year and truly made a name for themselves and McPherson College Bowling. They have created a very strong foundation for our program and the future is very bright!"
