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HARTINGTON — The last two events for the Hartington-Newcastle bowling team have offered a mixed bag of results for head coach Nate Holan.
But one thing is for sure, the boys feel pretty good about their performance at the Wayne Invitational on Dec. 28.
The boys first fell to the hosts 6-2, but beat Plainview 7-1 and Columbus- Lakeview 5-3.
In the bakers bracket, the boys fell to Columbus-Lakeview 3-1 and finished third by beating Plainview 3-1.
Memphis Ulrich (157, 164, 122), Ben Kleinschmit (182, 166, 180), Alex Elks (200, 124, 219), Christian Fiscus (165, 145, 188) and Barrett Bruning (164, 155, 158) led the way.
Despite falling short of a final, Kleinschmit was pleased with how the team competed against Wayne, one of the state’s heavies on the lanes.
“I definitely feel like we competed and I kind of feel like we started to pull the best out of them,” Kleinschmit said. “We started to put pressure on them, thinking that it’s not going to be an easy win and ‘you guys are gonna have to work for it If you want to beat the Hartington-Newcastle’steam.’” On Jan. 2, the boys beat Norfolk Catholic 13-8 as Ulrich (150, 157), Kleinschmit (138, 197), Elks (114, 119), Fiscus (183, 161) and Bruning (241, 166) came up pivotal in the victory.
Over the past weekend, Wayne beat HNS 19-2, but Kleinschmit is undeterred by the setback.
“We all did well, there were parts we can fine tune, but we were all consistent,” he said. All of us were decent and we put up a good fight against them. I mean how many straight years have they won the state championship?
“Last year at districts I could feel that we are starting to pull closer.
But this year just feels like we are right there from getting over the hump and it makes me feel pretty good.”
The girls lost to Wayne 8-0, beat Plainview 6-2 and beat Columbus-Lakeview 7-1 in the Wayne Invitational. The ladies were able to take down Columbus-Lakeview 3-1 in the Baker’s bracket before falling 3-0 to the hosts.
Aaralynn Collier (80, 120, 163), Ell Haag (116, 103, 95), Ali Ford (78, 101, 78), Dary Myo (99, 134, 114) and Faith Pinkelman (128, 156, 145) bowled for HNS.
The girls also beat Norfolk Catholic 13-8 behind the efforts of Collier (100, 118), Ford (74, 107), Haag (95, 109), Myo (140, 164) and Pinkelman (161, 102).
Wayne ended last week for the girls on a 21-0 downer.
This week, the teams travel to Pender and then on Saturday they will take part in the Howells-Dodge Tournament.
“We will be bowling some pretty good teams this week so it will be important that we stay consistent and pick up our easy spares to give ourselves a chance to win,” Holan said. “The last couple weeks our team scores have continued to trend up. A little too much up and down individually from game to game. We would like that to even out a little bit but as a whole we have been doing a lot better as a team. We are really starting to see big improvements as a team.”
Kleinschmit says it’s just about keeping the right temp.
“It just takes time and just picking up the really easy spares because, all of a sudden you miss one and there goes your game,” he said. “It’s just small things; everyone has different things to do it. I’d say tempo is one thing that everybody if they control that and they find the perfect tempo, I think we could go places.”
