I coach at Stephen F. Austin State University. After a long grueling week at the ITC, it definitely feels great to be back home. The field at the ITC contains, 16 Women's Teams, and 16 Men's Teams. I first want to say Congrats to Lindenwood Men and RMU Women on Winning the Championship. I will try to break down the week on how I saw the ITC tournament.

We knew going into the event that the patterns would not be disclosed, so we had to prepare as best as possible with equipment selection. Without any knowledge of the pattern, we rounded out the arsenal to be ready for any pattern. Whether it was short, medium, or long, we had high performance all the way down to low performance bowling balls. We are sponsored by Storm, whom I want to thank very much for their support. Our range on bowling balls consisted of Bytes, IQ's, and their Thunder Line.

Qualifying started on Wednesday morning. Qualifying is a quick 24 Baker Games. After the first couple of shots we noticed that we had some backend to play with down lane. We could tell it was not a long pattern by how much hook we had down lane. After trying a few shots outside, around 5-8 at the arrows and we noticed the same breakpoint. We dertermined that was where our best shot was, as long as, the shot was executed correctly. Any shot that missed left definitely went too far left. Our miss room right was not too bad. Very little washouts were left unless you were covering too many boards from the inside. Don't get me wrong here, during qualifying I was not stuck in one area. We tried outside, track, and inside and towards the end of qualifying, we had to game-plan for match play that night. We decided that the outside line was the best area to create room for error. Our game-plan was to use Mid-performance equipment in the Thunder Line with a little bit of surface. I used either a 1000 or 2000 Pad on some of the bowling balls to help blend out the backend.

The ITC is double elimination match play, so even if you lose one match, you still have hope at a title. You just have a longer road to get there. SFA qualified in 10th place and that forced us to start out with Lindenwood. It came down to the 7th game and every single game was won on the right lane. The left lane was just a bit tighter compared to the right lane. Due to the left lane playing tighter, scores were the lowest just on the left lane. The right lane had room for error which help boost the scores. SFA then moved on to play RMU(The Champs). RMU was in the same area as we were. They made some great shots and won the match 4-2. Four teams are done the same day of qualifying. Since we won one match we made it to Thursday.

On Thursday, McKendree University was next in line to battle. Shot making to begin the match was rather poor to say the least on both sides. McKendree was up 2-1 after 3 games. Nerves are definitely a factor on the biggest College stage. It doesn't help that we were bowling on a really tough pattern. This match came down to game 7 as well. SFA ended up rolling a 2 pin which force McKendree's anchor to double in the 10th frame. She made 2 great shots, struck on the first and rung a 10 pin on the second one. SFA somehow moved on by the grace of god. After that match we saw ourselves paired up with Lindenwood again. They ended up getting the best of us in 7 games. When it starts boiling down to the final 6 teams, they start setting up for the TV show. That also increases the emotion of getting on that next stage.

USBC ended up showing a graph of the pattern we bowled on. The girls bowled on a modified US Open pattern. It looked like they added a couple 5-5 loads but other than that, Extremely flat pattern. The guys were on the US Open pattern with no modifications. Scores were low and shot execution was at a premium. The pattern hardly changed which resulted in very small moves during the entire day.

The joy of being able to be at the biggest college stage is a feeling not too many get to take in. The best 16 teams in the country are there to win a National Title. The emotions are running high the entire time. The atmosphere is unlike any other bowling event I have ever been involved in. Qualifying is pretty loose with reactions and emotions. Match play in one of the most intense situations you can be involved in. I am so proud of all the things SFA accomplished and can't wait to see what may happen in the future the SFA girls paved.

Steve Lemke Bowling.com SFA NCAA Coach