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Anna Catherine Nussbaum

The Tulane women’s bowling team has competed in their first two events of the season, the Southwest Intercollegiate Conference Tournament and the Colonial Lanes Classic.

After a surprise evacuation to Birmingham, Alabama, due to Hurricane Ida, Tulane women’s bowling began the 2021-22 season in Dallas, at the Southwest Intercollegiate Conference Tournament. SWIBC was held over the course of two days, with Tulane competing against eight other collegiate bowling teams. 

On both days, Tulane did strikingly well, finishing as the top team in SWIBC I and as the second-place team in SWIBC II. “Considering everything we’ve been through, the team has grown very well,” Head Coach Hayley Veitch said. “I’m incredibly proud of how resilient the team has been through everything.” 

Despite the evacuation to Birmingham, Veitch ensured her team was well prepared for the season. The bowling facility had the ability to set pins in specific locations, to imitate different spare scenarios.

“So that’s exactly what we did for literally two weeks. We just put different combinations up and we just shot a lot of spares, so that obviously has helped with our spare span percentages,” Veitch said.

Following their triumphant performance in Dallas, the Green Wave returned to their home alley in Harahan, Louisiana, to host the Colonial Lanes Classic on Oct. 22 through 24. Veitch mentioned how excited the team was to bowl in front of their home crowd again. The bowling team went undefeated in Baker matches to rank second in the tournament on day one, beating out 12 other schools.

The team continued their success into day two, winning two of their five matches against North Carolina A&T State University and Grambling State University. At the end of the five matches, two Tulane bowlers cracked the top 20 individual bowlers. Madison McCall finished as the sixth-ranked bowler with an average of 221.6 pins per game, and Amelia Vasquez finished 20th with a total pinfall of 1,032.

The Green Wave lost their momentum on day three, going 0-3 on the day against Louisiana Tech University, Stephen F. Austin State University and Vanderbilt University. These losses dropped the team’s ranking to sixth in the tournament overall. 

Veitch kept her aims for the season high prior to the Colonial Classic, stating “We’d like to make it to Nationals. That is our number one goal, to make it to Nationals and do as well as we can.” 

Tulane bowling’s season continues through April 2022, with the team traveling to the Adelphi University Classic in Long Island, New York, for Halloween weekend.