Wahconah Tops Lee in County Championship Match

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. -- Down 2-0 in the best-of-seven County Championship match on Friday at Cove Lanes, the Wahconah bowling team got a big lift from the tandem of Austin Doyle and Cody Doyle.

 

The pair led off the third Baker format game against Lee with back-to-back strikes. Then, when their turns came around in the sixth and seventh frames, the Doyles again rolled strikes to help Wahconah build an insurmountable lead.

 

The team went on to win that game and the next three games for a 4-2 win and a second straight county crown.

 

“We lost by a little, so it wasn’t a big difference,” Wahconah anchor Alex White said of Lee’s 182-174 and 188-178 wins in the first two games. “We knew that it was spares.

 

“We were a little bit tight in the first game because Lee had played PHS to seven [in the semi-finals], and we were sitting around for a while. … It was one spare every game. It was 10 pins. So we knew we had to make our spares, maintain our concentration and, if one of us got down, everyone had to pick each other up.”

 

Spurred by the Doyles’ performance, Wahconah earned a convincing 202-147 win in the third game. Then it started Game 4 with five strikes in a row as Austin Doyle, Cody Doyle, Elliot Tribble, Amber Wood and White each cleared the lane. That led to a 235-145 win to even the match.

 

In Game 5, a strike by Wood in the ninth frame set up White to clinch a 204-157 victory.

 

And the deciding sixth game turned into a runaway after Tribble, Wood, White and Austin Doyle rolled strikes in the middle frames to build an big lead en route to a 227-181 win.

 

Lee junior Adam Dingman, who anchored the Wildcats to a pair of match wins on Friday to get to the finals, said that the seven-game decision against Pittsfield took a toll on the Wildcats going to the final.

 

“You could tell, some of us started to drop the ball, and physically we were getting a little tired,” he said. “It’s a lot of bowling. But you’ve just got to keep going.”

 

For Lee, which came into the day as the No. 4 seed, just getting to the finals was an accomplishment.

 

“Beating Pittsfield was pretty good,” Dingman said. “It felt good to finally beat one of the pretty good teams. Coming in second is tough. You’ve just got to move on. There’s always next year to come.”

 

There’s also next month, when Wahconah, Lee, Pittsfield, McCann Tech and Drury will represent their schools and the county at the state championships in Auburn.

 

On Friday, those five were joined by Mount Greylock for the six team county finals.

 

Pittsfield and McCann Tech were seeded first and second and received byes to the semi-finals.

 

In the quarter-finals, Lee’s Dingman struck out in the 10th frame to open up a tight third game and send the Wildcats on to a 138-116 win and, eventually, a 4-0 sweep of Drury.

 

Wahconah rolled over the Mounties, posting games of 227 and 234 along the way.

 

In the semis, Wahconah edged the Hornets in the first two games by scores of 180-176 and 191-182. In the first game, Wood rolled a key strike in the ninth that White followed with a spare and a nine.

 

Wahconah won the next two games more handily, by scores of 204-172 and 204-173, but the fourth game turned in the middle frames when an apparent Hornets strike was erased by a foul.

 

Lee, meanwhile, took a 3-2 lead in its match with PHS before the Generals rallied to force a winner-take-all seventh. A.J. Moore closed the sixth game, working on a strike, with a pair of strikes and a  six to give Pittsfield a 196-194 win.

 

But the Generals ran out of steam, as Lee won the seventh game handily, 170-107.

 

That knocked out both the favorites, setting up a title match between No. 4 Lee and No. 3 Wahconah.

 

And Wahconah, though third throughout the season, was first in every way on Friday, winning 12 of 14 games.

 

“It’s really a mental game,” White said. “If one team is out of it mentally, they’re going to be out.

 

“It’s up to team to bring it around and switch their mindset. Once they’re down and out, they can come back.”

 

White, who rolled two 300 games this winter in house league play, said that the Baker format matches, where teams of five (or more) alternate frames, brings a different mental approach.

 

“Individually, if you’re bowling, it’s really all on you,” White said. “You can’t have anyone pick you up. But in Bakers, it’s more of a team effort. If I went down, and I missed a spare or something, my team will pick me up.

 

“I feel like there’s a little less pressure in that way. But as anchor, when I’m up in the 10th frame and a big shot comes up, that’s a lot of pressure because I don’t want to let my team down. It’s more than just me that I’d be upsetting.”