Traverse City Record-Eagle

Bowling

February 28, 2009

U.P. bowls to D-3 state finals

Northern rollers find success at regional in TC

BY MIKE ECKERT

TRAVERSE CITY -- Before the crowd dispersed from Timber Lanes after Saturday's Division 3 high school bowling regional, a large group gathered at the middle of the alley.

About 20 bowlers -- all wearing various team jackets and bowling shirts -- huddled with their hands raised together and yelled the same thing over and over.

"Who are we," one player asked.

"The U.P.," the rest would reply.

The Upper Peninsula certainly made its presence known Saturday as 12 of the 20 state qualifiers -- six boys and six girls -- hailed from north of the Mackinac Bridge.

Steven Brunet, from Lanse, was the boys' regional champion with a six-game total of 1221.

"Not many words can explain this," Brunet said. "This is my senior year and

I wanted to come down and take this. This is the highlight of my year.

Brunet had an early lead with 812 after four games, but padded it with a 226 in the fifth.

"The fourth game was when my heart was still normal," Brunet said. "By the fifth game, my heart was pounding and I was shaking. The sixth game, I just had to hold it together."

Iron Mountain's Joe Tomassoni finished 53 pins back for second with 1168.

Rogers City -- which won the team regional title on Friday -- had individual qualifiers in Devon Ferris (1164), Lucas Bellmore (1161), Alec Gajewski (1135) and Robert Dietlin (1111). Menominee sent Justin Swette (1151), Steve Busick (1119) and James Fonder (1115) while Iron Mountain also placed Dan Mitchell (1088).

While no local bowlers advanced to the state finals, Elk Rapids' Stephen Pina was 12th (1038) Jordan Blodgett from Traverse City St. Francis was 13th (1029) and Andy Tuck from TC Christian was 16th (1015).

In the girls' competition, Mason County Eastern junior Janyl Porter repeated as regional champion with a six-game total of 1172. She built an early lead after throwing 224-202 in the first two games.

"I picked up a lot of different splits this year," Porter said. "(Early on) they were going right in the pocket. I lost it a little bit, but I kept picking up splits."

Porter finished 18th last year at the state finals, but is hoping to place in the top 16 this year and get in the final bracket.

Other individual state qualifiers included: Taylor Bannasch (1075) and Katie Darga (1070) from Rogers City, St. Ignace's Brooke Allan (1030) and Anna Krause (951), Menominee's Jean Fonder (1010), Chelse Simone from Iron Mountain (1009), Mason County Eastern's Danielle Stark (998) and Ewen-Trout Creek's Chelsea Nurmi (988) and Michelle Luokka (970).

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