Lockport senior bowler Devan Wysocki wasn’t taking anything for granted heading into the final game of the state tournament Saturday.
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“Going into the last game, coach [Art Cwudzinski] said, ‘Are you excited, how does it feel?’
“I said, ‘Coach, we’re not done yet.'”
True, the Porters weren’t done, but they weren’t about to slip up either.
Lockport, which posted the best score of any team in sectionals, took the lead after the second game Friday and never looked back, winning the state championship with a pin total of 12,267, a 204.5 per-game average that left them well-ahead of runner-up Rockford Guilford (11,911, 198.5).
It was Lockport’s third state title in girls bowling. The Porters won in 1994 and 1997.
“After sectionals we were all looking at the scores and thought ‘We can really do this, we just have to keep our focus,'” junior Mollie Sloyan said.
Wysocki was instrumental in helping the Porters build on a 161-pin Day 1 lead, bowling a team-best total of 1,348 Saturday that included a team-high game of 288. In the process, she moved from 12th to fourth in the individual standings and finished with a total of 2,637 (219.8 average). Sloyan, tied for the individual lead after Friday, finished eighth (2,585, 215.4).
Vernon Hills junior Nicole Sanhamel (2,723, 226.9) won the individual title, easily outdistancing Plainfield South’s Amanda Chamberlin (2,666, 222.2). Sanhamel, whose total was the second-highest in the tournament’s 37-year history, chose the right time for the best performance of her career. After a career-best 278 game on Friday (her previous high was 265), she raised the bar again with a 289 Saturday that essentially locked up the title.
“I knew I had a chance, but I didn’t think I had that good of a chance,” she said. “My average is about 180, so I was about 40 or 50 pins over average.”
For complete state tournament results, click
.