GREENSBORO, North Carolina — The University of Maryland Eastern Shore went 1-1 in bracket play on the final day of the Vern Stallings Invitational with its one victory coming against National Tenpin Coaches Association No. 6 North Carolina A&T State. The Hawks entered bracket play as the fourth seed and dropped the opening match to NTCA No. 2 Vanderbilt 4-0.
UMES (66-37, 10-6 MEAC) then topped the host Aggies to grab third place in the event.
"For not having our best stuff, I'll take a third-place finish this weekend for sure," Hawks coach Roger Petrin said. "With how tough the scoring was, it reminds me of the Hawk Classic back in November when those lanes were hard. This is one of our better performances when it is clear that the scores weren't high. Usually, we don't grind out very well. We did a good job grinding out some games not at 100 percent to maintain the No. 4 seed."
The Hawks came into Sunday's final Traditional match in third place and struggled a bit against Florida A&M falling 901-839. The score hurt their pinfall total and they dropped to the fourth seed, setting up the spot in the bracket opposite the Commodores.
"We finished it off well," Petrin said. "It started off rough, but it was just the things we need to go work on. All the things that caused us to lose in the first two matches, we had a quick team meeting after the second match and made a point that we needed to commit to some changes. We committed to it and things got massively better for us."
The team worked on ball rotations and making sure that the balls weren't getting too quick to the pattern and once they made some changes the pocket got much better.
Brooke Roberts (Port Orange, Florida) made the All-Tournament team with a six-game average of 204.0, which was good enough for sixth overall as an individual.
Petrin said freshman Mariana Santos (Jumandi, Colombia) also had a strong weekend. Santos averaged 194.8 through five Traditional games, which placed her No. 13 overall. Gabriella Ochoa Hubbard (Nogales, Sonora, Mexico) averaged 190.33 over six games to finish in 18th place.
The Hawks will next travel to United States Bowling Congress Team Sectionals in Smyrna, Tennessee on Mar. 10-12.
