When the Chittenango bowling teams arrived at Section III tournament week, it didn’t take long for the girls Bears’ Casey Smith to make her impact – and she kept on going until she knew that more big challenges lay ahead.
During the Feb. 1 sectional team tournament at Strike-N-Spare Lanes in Mattydale, Smith emerged as the top individual performer, the only girl out of more than 100 bowlers who went all six games to average better than 200.
Conditions were tough, but Smith immediately showed her strength with an opening game of 235 in the morning session. Following a 198 in the second game, Smith rebounded to a 221 in the third game, heading to the break with a 653 total and the individual lead.
As the afternoon session wore on, Smith could not quite keep that pace, managing a 169 in the fourth game and a 199 in the fifth game.
But Smith closed with a 206 that gave her a total pinfall of 1,228. That average of 204.67 put her 36 pins ahead of the second-place finisher, Fulton’s Kendra Tryniski (1,192), and well clear of Auburn’s Kaylee Fallat (1,101), who finished third.
From a team standpoint, Chittenango finished seventh among Class B sides, with a total of 4,005, well off the pace by Camden, who was first in Class B with 4,671 (and fifth overall), as Utica Proctor won the overall sectional title with 5,244, edging Auburn (5,195), and advanced to the state tournament at Strike-N-Spare on March 7-8.
Aside from Smith, Madison French had the best individual effort for the Bears, with a six-game total of 912 that included a 171 high game, doing that in the sixth and final game.
Five days later, at King Pins Lanes in Rome, Smith needed to finish in the top two of the Section III Shoot-Out to advance to the individual state tournament at Strike-N-Spare in early March – and ended up winning.
Smith rolled a 194 game in the opener and then posted back-to-back 204 games to complete the first session. Then, in the second session, Smith fired her top game of 238, adding a 190 and 189.
Finishing with a pinfall of 1,219, Smith was 29 pins ahead of Rome Free Academy’s Megan Durgan, and both advanced to the state tournament, joining Durgan’s RFA teammate, Korena Kinney, along with Tryniski, Fallat and Clinton’s Meghan Doris.
