The Dragons and the Wildcats share the lanes at Collier lanes. The match would hold bragging rights for the 2 programs.
The Lake Orion girls team is in a bit of rebuild mode currently. They had some significate bowlers graduate last year and the program lost their longtime coach, Denny Oneill, over the summer. The Wildcats took both baker games and 5 matches to secure a 25-5 match victory. This runs the Oxford teams record to 4 and 0 on the season. The lady Cats were led by Emaleigh vonKnorring’s179, Maya Vetch169, Elleanna Ford167 and Phebe Coffman’s 166.
“The Girls need to continue to Improve. They are winning but aren’t hitting on all cylinders yet. They are working hard and I’m confident they will keep improving.”
The boys program for Lake Orion and Oxford are both very healthy with quality and quantity. The teams were able to have 2 jv teams face off as well as varsity. The Wildcat JV teams dominated win match 1- 27 to 3 and match 2- 22 to 8. Bowling well for the Oxford JV teams were John Bianchi 219, Ryan Curtis 194, Gavin Mlynarek 191, 225, Kellen Rummel 214,184, Aiden Burkhardt 199 and Joey Watson 211,187.
“It was fun to see all these boys being able to compete tonight. They work as hard as anyone and deserve this opportunity. We have some young talented bowlers and these matches are important for their development.”
The highlight of the night was the Varsity boys match. Both teams are undefeated on the season and have very talented rosters.
The Wildcats jumped on the Dragons in the first baker game 253-201. In game 2 of baker the Orion team won 205 to 184. The Oxford team headed into match play with a 6 to 4 lead. In the first match play game the Dragons dominated the Wildcats led by Gage Boyer. Gage had the first 11 strikes in route to a 297 game. He was supported by teammates Austin Barthel’s 245, Kris Tubbs 241, and Henry Williams 213. The Dragons score of 1159 had the Wildcats behind by a score of 11 ½ to 7 ½. Needing to nearly sweep the Dragons in the next game the Wildcats mounted a charge. Oxford secured victories in game 2 by Dom Kempen 213-190, Nate Alexander 205-159 and late frame heroics by Dominic Hambly 224-221. The match would hinge on the match between LO’s Henry Williams and Oxford’s Matt vonKnorring. vonKnorring trailed most of the way but was charging with strikes in the 8th and 9th frame to tie up the match. In the deciding 10th frame Matt threw a good shot for and 8 count then spared and struck. This meant Henry would need to mark to win the game and the match. Henry was up for the challenge a tossed two strikes to close out the match, Final Score 14 ½ to 15 ½. The two teams will match up again on February 10th.
“Going into this match this is what I expected. A tough high scoring match that would go down to the wire. They made fewer key mistakes than we did and deserve the victory. I’m extremely proud of the effort we had tonight especially after LO shot lights out in game 1. It would have been easy to fold but we fought to the end. They are a good team and we knew that going into the match. We have 3 matches next week and will need to shake this off and take care of business next week if we want to win the OAA red division.”