BATON ROUGE, La. – The Prairie View A&M bowling team closed out its most important event to date on a positive note as they finished the 2010 SWAC West Bowling Round-ups tied for the divisional lead.
Held at Don Carter Lanes in Baton Rouge, La., the Lady Panthers opened the round-up on Friday with easy wins over Mississippi Valley State and Alabama State before battling with two-time defending SWAC Champion Southern University. The Lady Panthers rose to the occasion and defeated Southern on its own turf and followed it up with another win against Jackson State.
After an impressive 4-0 start, the Lady Panthers headed into Friday’s finale against Grambling State a heavy favorite as they were undefeated against the Lady Tigers in earlier games this season. However, Prairie View picked the wrong time to bowl its worst game of the season as Grambling State pulled off the upset and denied the Lady Panthers a shot at first place after the first day of action.
“I think we got complacent before the game started as we’ve beaten them routinely this year,” said head coach Glenn White on Friday. “We weren’t focused and left Grambling in the game too long and they got on a roll. We came back in the 10th frame but it was too little too late.”
The team responded and finished with a 4-0 mark on Sunday which created a two-way tie atop the SWAC West standings with Southern.
“We had to win if we wanted to reach our goal of finishing at the top this weekend,” said White. “I was proud of how my team performed on Sunday as we accomplished our goal due to being tied for first in the SWAC West.”
Along with being tied for the SWAC Western Division lead, the Lady Panthers finished the tournament ranked second overall in total pins behind Alabama A&M. Freshman Cynthia Veney led the team with an average of 191.4 and had three big games with scores of 244, 243 and 232. Sophomore Lejewlia Lewis followed with a 178.5 average that included scores of 232 and 217.
The Lady Panthers are in great position to qualify for the SWAC Tournament for only the second time in school history.