In a place where winners often need both luck and skill, Duquesne’s Kiearra Saldi had one and not the other.
Saldi, competing as the 10th seed in the USBC Intercollegiate Nationals at South Point Bowling Center this week in Las Vegas, won her first-round match against Clarke’s Kassidy Gerken, 519-502. In the second round, however, she ran up against the sport’s equivalent of a card shark in Stephen F. Austin’s Chloe Skurzynski, the defending champion who bowled an 805 series, which included a 300 game, to beat Saldi’s 596.
Saldi’s score was 77 points higher than her first-round tally, but, as luck would have it, Skurzynski’s was 88 points higher than even the next-best score through the tournament’s first three rounds. Only two bowlers eclipsed 700.
“That was the theme of the week. We ran into buzzsaws in both the singles and team event,” Dukes coach Jody Fetterhoff said.
Duquesne, the 10th seed in the team portion of the tournament, lost its first two matches Friday in the Baker double-elimination format, 4-1 to seventh-seeded Wichita State and 4-2 to No. 2 seed Louisiana Tech. In the Baker format, bowlers rotate in and out by frame with each team getting a point for a win in the best-of-seven series.
The brackets didn’t show it, but Fetterhoff was pleased with how her team bowled — she said it averaged about a 200 for the tournament.
“Probably our greatest strength is our spare shooting,” she said. “It was a much higher scoring pace this year than in the past. Our team’s not known for striking. It’s definitely something we’re going to go back and work on.”
The Dukes (70-34) finished the season ranked 11th in the country and return all but Saldi from their roster of six. Fetterhoff has signed two recruits who will be freshmen in the fall: Maribeth Baker of Pennridge High School in York, Pa., and Ivanna Fraticelli of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, who was a member of the Puerto Rico National Youth Team.
Rob is an associate sports editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike.