Last weekend, a group of amazing youth bowlers from Altus and Navajo high schools represented the Altus area by sending 3 teams to the USBC High School State Tournament in Tulsa Saturday.
16 boy’s teams and 16 girl’s teams competed in the State tournament after qualifying during the Regional tournament. All teams started the competition with an 8 game qualifying round, where 5 bowlers from each team took their turns at rolling their best, to achieve the highest scores possible. After the judges tallied the 8 game totals, the teams were ranked 1-16. The top 8 boy’s teams and top 8 girls teams moved into bracket play.
Navajo Boys team had a combined score of 1,255 with an average of 156. They finished 13th just 156 pins out 8th place finisher Broken Arrow.
Altus Girls team finished with a total pin count of 1,000 with an average of 125 finishing 9th place.
Navajo Girls team had a total pin count of 1,064 just 64 pins ahead of Altus Girls team. This was enough pin fall to advance to the 8 top teams bowling in the bracket play. The first bracket had Navajo bowl against the top seed Yukon which bowled a combined score of 1,333 and averaged 166 during the first 8 games.
The girls from Navajo were excited and very concerned they had to bowl the #1 seed to start. The first team to win 3 matches advance to the semi finals and the loser goes home. The first match Navajo was very nervous and bowled a 109 against Yukon who bowled 153 losing the first game. The second game, Navajo bowled much better but still lost 153 to 165. In the stands, you could see a change going on, instead of conceding the third game and being eliminated, Navajo started to have fun. They went on to beat Yukon 155 to 125, then again 152 to 125, so now the matches were tied 2-2.
It came down to the final game, Yukon looked like they were in a daze thinking they should have quickly discharged Navajo and been in the semi finals already. The Navajo girls were excited and were on the power curve to take on Yukon for the last game. Navajo bowled their best and kept the lead the entire game, Yukon could not catch up. Navajo won the final game 139 to 132 and advanced to the semi finals.
The next match was against the Mustang girls. Navajo won the first match 149 to 144. The second match Navajo lost 147 to 169. The third game, Navajo lost again 132 to 157. The final match, Navajo bowled their best and could not pull through and lost by 3 pins to Mustang. This ended the magical season for Navajo who bowled against many schools that are much bigger such as Yukon, Lawton Eisenhower, Sapulpa, Broken Arrow, Mustang, Ponca City, Altus, and Lawton MacArthur.
Mustang advanced to the finals and lost to Lawton Eisenhower for the state championship.
The All State bowling team was announced and the Brooke Carlson, Robert Davidson, and Sarah Standard won this award.
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