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WAYNE —A season of progress and growing promise ended up paying dividends for the Hartington-Newcastle boys bowling team.
The Wildcats cme away from Monday’s District meet not just qualifying for the state finals as a team, but by capturing the top prize as the tournament champion.
Barrett Bruning (153, 167, 176), Memphis Ulrich (122, 161, 130), Alex Elks (135, 183, 166), Ben Kleinschmit (118, 144,144) and Christian Fiscus (101, 163, 133) spurned the Wildcats onto a historical performance.
The team state competition will be on Tuesday at Sun Valley Lanes in Lincoln.
“We struggled a bit out of the gate to get started in the first game,” HNS coach Nate Holan said. “We were sitting fourth after the first game. We would bowl our best team game in the second game to move up to third. We bowled OK in the third game and held onto the third spot.
Bruning had the highest individual performance, finishing eighth.
The bakers bracket is where the Wildcats state bread was made.
They entered the field as the third seed and received a first-round bye and took on Thurston-Cuming County in the second round in the first of best-of-five series. HNS won in four games.
Up next was powerhouse and host Wayne. Hartington won the first two games while winning the second game in a one-ball roll off, and tied the second game to force a tiebreaker.
Elks admitted the team was nervous heading into the post-season match.
“This caused some of us to overthink and struggle throughout the matches,” Elks said. “We continued our day with a little bit of a struggle in the individual games due to the pressure and difficult oil pattern. After we had won (against TC), we had to prepare to go against the defending state champions (Wayne) and this made all of us on the team extremely nervous and just wanted to bowl our best games of the day.”
Wayne’s bowler rolled a nine frame and then Elks stepped up and nailed a strike to win the second game. That came in handy as the hosts fought back to tie the series at 2-all.
“Wayne sent their best bowler out and scored nine pins. I volunteered to attempt to bowl a strike and then got the strike.”
Then came the dramatic clincher.“We started the first five frames with fills to open up a lead,” Holan said. “Wayne battled back and it came down to the tenth frame to decide the district championship. Barrett stepped up and threw his first two balls for strikes to seal the game and the district championship.
“It was a battle all day. The boys kept grinding and fighting and found a way to make it to the finals. Once you get there anything can happen. They really wanted it and bared down in the last game and made big shots when they needed to. We were hopeful going in we could make the finals and knew we would have to beat Wayne to make it to state. They are a really good team, one of the best in the state so we knew it was an uphill battle. We just needed to keep filling and put the pressure on them. We did a great job of that and found a way to win.”
Elks said afterward the season’s upward climb paid off with plenty of hard work.
“This season has been full of ups and downs in improving our skills,” Elks said. “Our entire team has done a lot to focus on improving and getting the win for district champions.”
