VIRGINIA BEACH, Virginia — The University of Maryland Eastern Shore women's bowling squad did everything it could this past weekend to improve its chances at gaining a berth to the NCAA Tournament. A fifth-place finish at the Music City Classic against the toughest field the Hawks have faced all season, surely improved their national standing when the time comes to hand out at large bids.
But on Friday (March 25) morning they begin a quest to take out the guesswork altogether.
The team seeks its first MEAC championship since 2019, and with it an automatic bid to the 16-team championship field.
"We are just trying to stay focused on the one goal that we have right now which is to win that MEAC Championship," junior Brooke Roberts (Port Orange, Florida) said. "The end of the season is always that crunch time area. I feel like we got in a good spot towards the end of the season. I feel like we are all clicking together and we are all making the right communications together. I feel like we are going in the right direction right now. This past weekend gave us so much confidence and now we are just trying to stay focused on what we need to do and not let overconfidence go to our head."
No. 3 seed Eastern Shore (71-48) begins the event at 9 a.m. versus No. 6 seed University of Alabama-Birmingham. The winner will face No. 2 seed Delaware State at 1 p.m., while the loser will fall to the elimination bracket of the double-elimination event.
"I think that the main thing is to stay focused," graduate student Paulina Torres (Ponce, Puerto Rico) said. "We had this good weekend and we have a break because it is spring break so everything on our mind right now is about staying focused. This is the moment that we have been waiting for all year and now it's here."
The Shore took Monday off, but then returned to practice and workouts on Tuesday. One more practice Thursday morning came before the ride south to Virginia Beach where the event is being hosted at Pin Boys at The Beach.
"I think we will have some time Thursday evening, so we can figure out what we can do together so that we can stay focused," Torres said. "We'll have a good bonding experience so that we can start the tournament how we want to start."
Torres is the only member of the squad who was on the team that won the MEAC title in 2019 and advanced to the NCAA semifinals, so she knows a little something about getting her teammates on the same page and that has been valuable as the postseason approached.
"We are an older team in a way," Roberts said. "Because we don't have any freshmen. We only have two sophomores, but when it comes to postseason, we are a young team because the experience just isn't there. That's crazy to think about."
Roberts herself has won MEAC Rookie of the Year 2020) and well as a Second-Team All-MEAC (2020), Preseason All-MEAC (2021) and a First-Team All-MEAC (2022), but because of the COVID Pandemic has yet to see a postseason.
The same is in fact true for classmates Elizabeth Ross (Schenectady, New York) and Alejandra Amezcua (Baja California, Mexico) as well as sophomores Gabriella Ochoa Hubbard (Nogales, Sonora, Mexico) and Brooke Driver (Woodbridge, Virginia).
But they are ready to add that experience together and are hoping those three days in Smyrna, Tennessee are just a tease of what's to come.
"It felt fantastic. It really feels like we are peaking at the right time," Ross said. "It is getting me really excited for the possibilities. We were all bowling how I knew we could. I've seen it. I know all of us are fantastic and to see it finally play out was unreal. This is where we are supposed to be.
"But we are not looking too far ahead right now. I think we are taking it one shot at a time. We said that a lot last weekend because we were bowling great, but we didn't want to lose focus. We kept reminding ourselves: shot-by-shot, frame-by-frame and just stay present in the moment. That's our approach for this weekend."
While the Hawks are finally starting to see what they are capable of at the most important part of the season, they probably aren't the only ones and head coach Roger Petrin thinks that works in their advantage this time of year.
"I think other teams are starting to recognize it too, which is great for us," Petrin said. "I think we are the team nobody wants to play against right now. We have the capability of competing like a Top 5 team in the nation. We proved that this weekend, but it's just on a given weekend what will happen? It is difficult with six people to do that, but we have the capability of doing it and it's a scary thing to face that as an opponent."
"A majority of the time, I know how we are going to perform and I can feel it in the mornings. There is a vibe in the air in the and we just had that vibe in the air all weekend long. I am feeling that vibe right now this week and I feel like good things are going to happen this weekend."
