RedTail Men’s and Women’s Bowling Teams Compete in M.I.B Conference Tournament
It was a busy weekend for the RedTails as we competed in the 3rd installment of the Mid-Iowa Bowling Conference on Saturday. The day started with 3 team games, where all the RedTails were hot, and everyone performed over their season averages on both sides. The men found themselves in 3rd place before going into the baker's portion of the tournament and were led by sophomore Ryder Fleming, who won with a score of 691 for his three games and made yet another All-Tournament Team appearance. Right behind him was freshman Tyson Bramble, who finished in 2nd with a 679 for his three games and making his first ATT appearance. Once bakers started, the RedTail men hit a little rough patch and fell to 7th. On the women's side, there was a lot to take away with personal high scores across the team. Sophomore Samie Camilo led the women with a 232 game to start the day, and she cracked the top 10 in the tournament for the individual portion of the tournament. Following Samie was freshman Brooklyn Bennett, who was in 11th place. On another note, Samie, Brooklyn, and Madison Dreckman were all 40 pins over their season averages. The ladies finished in 7th on Saturday.
Now, onto Sunday, which was contested as a separate tournament and used as the Conference Championship with bracket play all day. The men started as the 7th seed based on the season's conference standing, and the best they could have finished in the bracket was 5th. In a best of 3 out of 5 bakeries match, the men won their first match against Iowa State in three straight games, so then they moved on to bowl against Waldorf. Now going against Waldorf, the RedTails took them to a close game five, where Ryder Fleming needed to get two strikes in the final game to beat the Warriors but fell a little short. This took them back down to bowl against Iowa State again for the 7th & 8th place, where they beat the Cyclones again in a straight three games. For the RedTail women, they entered the bracket in 9th based on the season conference standings, and the best they could have finished was 7th with how the bracket was laid out. The women had a first-round bye, so they used that free time as an opportunity to get comfortable with the lane conditions. Moving onto the next match, we played against Luther College, and even though the format is supposed to be a best 3 out of 5 baker game match, both teams won 2 of the games and tied in another one, so we tied in the match and had to bowl a decisive 6th game to move on. Unfortunately, we fell a little short in that game and went back down to 9th.
Overall, there was a lot of good to take away from this past weekend and the head-to-head formats will show our players what they can do and the mentality it will take to perform well this coming weekend in our home tournament, the Cedar Valley Invite, where we will be using a head to head format as well and then that mental toughness is something we will need when we go out to Buffalo for our NJCAA Nationals at the end of the month.