Drury Bowlers Win County Title in Dramatic Fashion
PITTSFIELD, Mass. -- Alli Brassard has been a very good bowler all year for the Drury High bowling team.
On Friday afternoon, she achieved greatness.
Brassard nailed a spectacular spare at the perfect time to help the Blue Devils pull out out a 202-191 win over McCann Tech in the deciding seventh game of the Berkshire County Championship match.
Bowling in the Baker Format, where five bowlers alternate bowling two frames apiece, Brassard took her second turn of the deciding game with Drury holding a slight advantage on the scoreboard.
But McCann’s Kalley Vanuni rolled her second strike of the game while Brassard’s first ball left a 4-7-9-10 split.
“To be honest, I was thinking she was going to get the two [pins], and I was going to have to strike out to put pressure on [McCann’s Brandon Vallone],” said Drury senior Zach Yeaton, who was bowling the fifth and 10th frames in the finale.
Brassard herself had little confidence based on her experience in the 11 games that preceded that Game 7.
“It was actually pretty crazy,” she said. “I've been missing my seven pin all day. So, it was a split-second decision to actually go for the seven pin. It was like, 'I'm more consistent with my 10 pin.' But I said, 'You know what, I'll just go for the seven pin,' and, I don't know, it just went, and it happened.”
It was, in the opinion of her coach, nothing short of miraculous.
“I thought we were in trouble,” Todd Yeaton said. “That has to be one of the most amazing splits I've ever seen. I could not believe it. All I could think about was the Olympics back in 1980: 'Do you believe in Miracles?' That's all I kept thinking about. It was just an incredible shot. Once we picked that up, I knew we were winning the game. It fired everybody else on the team up.”
Nick Johnson followed with a strike that was matched by McCann’s Austin Davine, and Yeaton and Vallone matched each other on the final frame, allowing top-seeded Drury to back up its regular season first-place finish with a wild championship win.
Drury advanced to the title match by virtue of a 4-1 win over Pittsfield in the semis.
The Generals, who advanced to the semi-finals with a 4-2 win over Monument Mountain, took advantage of a slow start by the Blue Devils, who had a bye in the first round of the six-team playoff. Pittsfield won the first game of their best-of-seven, 170-157, but Drury rallied to even the match and took control in the third game when Johnson delivered two strikes and a nine in the 10th frame to wrap up a 206-177 win.
McCann Tech also had a bye in the quarters. The Hornets in the semi-finals faced Mount Greylock, a 4-2 survivor against Taconic in its first match of the day.
McCann broke open a close match early in the second game when Christopher Bostwick picked up a 6-7 spare. The Hornets went on to win that game and the next two by wide margins to earn a 4-0 win and a shot against the five-time defending state champion Blue Devils in the final.
Drury won the first game of their title match, 163-152, but the Blue Devils were less than invincible, in part because senior Zach Yeaton, who had a 222 average in the regular season, struggled to find his rhythm on Friday at Ken’s Bowl.
“That was news to us,” Brassard said. “He's usually our anchor. So when he did that, we were just, 'Oh, boy, we've got to step up now.' “
Zach Yeaton was glad they did.
“It took me a while to figure out where to adjust,” he said. “The rest of the team was pretty much picking me up the whole time.
“I was trying to figure out the right ball to use. Dad, my coach, was telling me something to do that wasn't working, so I said, 'You know what, I'm going to try what I'm thinking,' and sure enough, that worked. The final two games, we all pulled together and pulled through.”
McCann won the next two games -- the second when Vallone picked up a dramatic 2-4-7-8 spare in the 10th to win, 168-160.
Drury evened the match at two wins apiece in a low-scoring game four and edged McCann in Game 5 when Yeaton rolled a pair of strikes in the 10th to anchor a 183-175 victory.
McCann rallied in a do-or-die Game 6 when Vanuni and Austin Davine rolled strikes in frames eight and nine, respectively, and Vallone went spare-strike in the 10th to secure a 202-188 win.
That set the stage for seventh, where Drury got two strikes from Aleasia Yeaton and another from Justyn Cowell en route to the win.
Brassard, who had the second-best average among girls in the league this season (172) and the 14th-best average overall said that the Blue Devils have a lot of experience in tight spots.
“Every state [meet] so far has been a struggle,” she said. “During the season, we tend to get down ourselves, and there's a little bickering back and forth. But when we need to win, we really, really work together as a team. We know how to pick each other up. When someone's down, when you miss a spare, we focus on the next ball.”