Prospect soars to first
Prospect came in to Monday night’s final regular-season Mid-Suburban League girls bowling meet needing to sweep its match over Fremd and have Hoffman Estates beat MSL leader Elk Grove to take over the top spot.
Welcome to first place, Knights.
Led by senior Whitney Schmidt, Prospect defeated the Vikings 9-0, while Hoffman’s impressive 7-2 victory over Elk Grove helped the Knights leapfrog both teams and stand alone at the top heading into Saturday’s conference tournament.
Propect is 88-11 to lead the Grenadiers and Hawks, 86-13.
“This is the closest the standings have been going into the conference meet in a long, long time,” said Knights coach Greg Troyer.
Schmidt rolled a 677, including games of 235 and 230, but said that she and her teammates didn’t realize they could rise to first place until later in the match.
“Coach Troyer told me in our second game that it could happen,” Schmidt said. “I did think about it, but I was more focused on trying to meet a goal that I set for myself. I wanted to bowl 700 tonight. It didn’t happen, but I was close and I think that helped us out a lot.”
The Knights’ anchor came into the final meet 12th individually in the MSL with a 194.44 average, and earlier this season she won the Lockport Invite by 1 pin.
“That was a great feeling,” said Schmidt. “I know I’m a good bowler, but never did I think that I’d win an invitational like that. They were calling out the score of the second-place winner, and when they called the first three numbers of the score, they were the same as mine so I thought I was second. Then they called out someone else’s name and at that point I knew I had won.”
Prospect’s Allison Walsh had the meet’s top game — a 258.
Hoffman Estates senior Kara Hartel led the way over the Grens with a 224 in Game 3.
“We always bowl well at the end of games,” Hartel said. “It’s like we wake up and have an epiphany or something. The strikes start coming like crazy. This feels good, especially since no one else has beaten Elk Grove this year. We bowled our hearts out tonight. It was a total team effort.”
The Hawks’ Kailey Schlosser rolled a 254 game and 649 series.
Barbie Gutwein fired a 617 series as Palatine beat Buffalo Grove 9-0.
Conant’s Sam Picenti fired a 222 game to lead Conant to a sweep over Barrington. Taryn Hampton rolled a 226 as Rolling Meadows blanked Hersey.
Senior Jodi Gawlik led Schaumburg to a 9-0 win over Wheeling with a 693 series, and junior Cheyenne Pfeiffer had a 633.