PRINCESS ANNE, Maryland — The University of Maryland Eastern Shore needed a good showing this past weekend at the Music City Classic against a 33-team field that sported 17 teams in the National Tenpin Coaches Association Top 25 — including nine of the Top 10.
The No. 16 Hawks finished fifth overall after entering Sunday's bracket play in the No. 5 seed position.
"Looking at the field that was here this weekend, it was the strongest field we have been in all year," Hawks coach Roger Petrin said. "I kept looking at it and thinking that we could finish in at least eighth then that's a pretty good weekend. Based on how we had been bowling all year I thought we could hit those numbers. But over the weekend I felt like we finally hit the numbers we had been trying to obtain all year."
On Sunday, The Hawks (71-48, 11-5 MEAC) topped No. 6 North Carolina A&T State 4.5-2.5 taking down one of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference squads they will face at this week's championship.
"That match was really fun and challenging," Petrin said. "We trailed 2-1 before we tied in the fourth set when they missed a single-pin in the 10th frame. We were kind of handed a gift and then from that point we took advantage of it and won."
Eastern Shore continued to bowl well, but still dropped the second match to No. 4 Vanderbilt before taking another win against the Aggies to finish the event in fifth place.
"It was one of those weekends where we had a good day, we needed to do it again on Day 2 and we did it again," Petrin said. "Then it was like OK, let's do it one more time and we did that this time versus other events where we have always had one bad day or one really bad set that messes us up each weekend."
Brooke Roberts (Port Orange) finished third overall in Traditional play with a five-game average of 232.40, but she was far from the only one to contribute. It was Brooke Driver (Woodbridge, Virginia) who had her best event of the season contributing in both Traditional (5-game average of 201.60) as well as in Baker play.
"She has easily her best weekend of the year," Petrin said. "We made some pitch adjustments to her fit about two weeks ago. Those adjustments made a huge difference with her ability to repeat shots and make spares. So as a team on the weekend we averaged 91% on single-pins and 83% on makeable. It was a really good weekend for spare shooting and we were at 48% on strikes as well. It was a good complete solid performance from everybody on the team."
The Shore will next travel to Pin Boys in Virginia Beach, Virginia for the MEAC Championship. Play will begin with practice and an early elimination round for the lowest seeds on Thursday, but the Hawks will not compete until Friday morning.
"Some of the girls are talking about how it now feels like we can win this," Petrin said. "The confidence is high. But we had this same confidence after the second MEAC meet and we faltered. So we have to focus. We'll use this energy, but stay focused in practice this week and take it into our competition this weekend.
"We'll look to get out of the gates quickly, and keep plugging away. We're seeing the lanes. We're communicating well. We're doing everything at a very high level. We just have to continue to do all those things and not get distracted."
