Before joining NCAA, Wichita State women’s bowling adds one more ITC national title

In its final season before transitioning to NCAA status, the Wichita State women’s bowling team showed why it will be a championship contender right away.

Up against a Jacksonville State team that had just won the NCAA championship a week earlier, the Shockers prevailed in the televised finals of the Intercollegiate Team Championships in Louisville on Sunday.

Women’s bowling will officially become an NCAA-sanctioned sport on July 1 this summer. The Shockers depart ITC competition with 11 national championships, the most in the country and nearly double the next-closest program, West Texas A&M with six.

“It just gave us that confidence that we know we can compete and it’s not like we’re going to be this brand-new program that’s just starting up,” WSU women’s coach Holly Harris said. “We have a legacy. We can compete against anybody. We’re going in expecting to be successful.”

After being one throw away from advancing to the televised finals last year, the Shockers were dominant in their march to the championship — winning four straight matches by comfortable margins.

The final, which will be televised on CBS Sports Network at 7 p.m. May 7, nearly went the same way, as WSU won the first two games in a best-of-five series against the NCAA champions.

But Jacksonville State battled back, winning two straight games to force a decisive fifth.

“Our girls are just so resilient and fun to watch,” Harris said. “We’ve talked all year about how we can do hard things together.

“That sort of became our mantra: ‘We’re going to have to do some hard things this week, but we can do it together.’ We kept repeating that over and over, and we kept having success over and over. And I think that gave us so much confidence, knowing that no matter what comes our way, we’ve done hard things before and we’re going to grit our teeth and do the next hard thing.”

After both teams began the fifth game with open frames, WSU won the Helmer Cup for the 11th time by delivering nine straight strikes in a 264-199 victory.

The championship squad featured Mary Orf, who was named the women’s division Most Valuable Player, Sara Duque, Brooklyn Gagnon, Aleesha Oden, Haysville native Piper Reams, Great Bend native Paige Wagner and Ashtyn Woods. The lineup included just one senior in Orf with five of seven members being underclassmen.

Less than 90 minutes after helping the Shockers win the team title, Duque, a freshman from Colombia, was competing for the individual national championship. She claimed the ISC title to make it a WSU sweep with a victory in the finals over Lindenwood’s Hailey Bozych in the finals.

The match will be televised on CBS Sports Network at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

“That was an incredibly hard thing to do to be on such a high from winning the team title, then having to turn it off and focus on the next thing,” Harris said. “She did such an amazing job of bringing in that confidence, but also knowing that she had a new job to do. She was just incredible for us. All of the girls were.”

Duque followed in the footsteps of Wagner, who also won the national title as a freshman last year. The Shockers have featured six individual national champions since 2006, a list that also includes Sydney Brummett (2017), Daniela Alvarado (2009), Elysia Current (2007) and Olivia Sandham (2006).

“I was really excited to win and I was very happy, but it felt much better when we won the trophy as a team,” Duque said. “We work together the whole year to achieve the same goal, so it’s a better feeling to win as a team when everyone is happy at the same time for the same thing.”

The men’s team also had a bowler reach the ISC finals, as freshman Braden Mallasch won four straight matches as the No. 13 seed. In the televised finals, Mallasch was edged out, 236-205, by Marian (Wisc.) sophomore Jaysen Spanbauer. It was nearly an all-Shocker final, as Barnes won three straight matches to advance to the semifinals, but lost 259-253 to Spanbauer.

The quest for a 14th national championship for the WSU men’s program came up just short, as the Shockers advanced to the finals of the ITC red bracket but lost to Webber International to reach the televised finals. The roster featured Mallsch, Barnes, Spencer Robarge, Brandon Bonta, Brandon Caruso, David Hayes, TJ Rock and Carter Street.

Shocker men’s golf rallies for best AAC postseason finish

Entering the American Athletic Conference championship meet, the Wichita State men’s golf team had the 11th-best scoring average in the 12-team conference.

Coach Judd Easterling used that as motivation for the 54-hole event at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Florida.

“We’ve been hammering that into these guys’ minds the whole time, that bulldog, underdog mentality,” Easterling said. “I just told them, ‘There’s no way we’re (that low). We’re proving them wrong and showing them who we are as a team. They believed from the get-go.”

WSU notched the program’s best finish in its brief history at the AAC championship, rallying past Memphis with a 2-under par day on Sunday for third place with a team score of 842 strokes, only behind South Florida (828) and SMU (835). USF’s Jake Peacock won individual medalist honors with an 11-under score of 199.

Overland Park native Michael Winslow fired a 4-under round of 66 on Sunday to move up from 19th to a tie for fourth place with a 3-under, 54-hole total of 207. The individual leaderboard also saw two other Shockers join him in the top-15: senior Blake Lorenz (210, tied for 12th) and Wichita native Zach Sokolosky (211, tied for 14th).

“(Winslow) was just dialed in from the start of the round (on Sunday),” Easterling said. “He really didn’t make a mistake all day and to finish fourth in this conference is really good and I’m super proud of him. He made a birdie on a long par 4 down the stretch and that’s one of the best birdies I’ve ever seen the kid make. He just had a really good day.”

WSU set the tone with a strong Day 1, as Winslow (68), Lorenz (69) and Sokolosky (69) all finished under par and the team was just two strokes off the lead. The Shockers stumbled a bit on Saturday, falling into a tie for fourth place, but they gained 14 strokes on Memphis with their play on Sunday to rally up the standings for a third-place finish. According to Easterling, WSU led the 54-hole tournament in par-3 scoring.

It was an emotional but dignified ending to the careers of Lorez, Sokolowsky and fellow senior Aston Castillo. The team is slated to return Winslow and fellow junior Lucas Sceufler, an Andover native, who rounded out the postseason scoring lineup.

“It was a tough day for those seniors being their last event, but it was a great day for us as a team,” Easterling said. “We’ve got some talented pieces coming back and a really good recruiting class coming in, so we’re excited about the future.”

Other spring sports wrap up for Wichita State

The WSU women’s golf team finished ninth with a 36-over score of 900 strokes in the 12-team AAC championship event played at Southern Hills Plantation Club in Brooksville, Fla. on April 15-17.

UTSA’s Daniela Abonce won the individual title with a 9-under score of 207, while SMU edged Tulsa for the team crown by two strokes with a 21-under team score of 843.

Wichita native Kate Tilma notched the best individual finish for the Shockers, as the sophomore finished in a tie for 15th place with a 7-over score of 223.

The WSU women’s tennis team avenged a regular-season loss to Tulsa in the opening round of the AAC championship event in Dallas, sweeping the Golden Hurricane, 4-0, to advance to the quarterfinals.

After being swept by No. 43-ranked Charlotte in the regular season, the Shockers pushed the 49ers down to the final match in an eventual 4-3 loss. The 13 wins for WSU (13-10) this season were the most since 2019, while the postseason win over Tulsa also marked the team’s first AAC postseason win since 2019.

WSU claimed the doubles point when the duo of Natsumi Kurahashi and Xin Tong Wang won 6-2 in the No. 2 slot and Theodora Chantava and Giorgia Roselli won 6-4 in the No. 3 slot. Kristina Kudryavtseva (No. 4) and Jessica Anzo (No. 6) won in singles, which set up a third set in No. 5 singles to decide the match.

Roselli won a tiebreaker to claim the opening set, but lost 6-4 in the second set. She jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the decisive third set, but Charlotte’s Shona Nakano rallied for a 6-4 win.

“I am so proud of the effort and the way we competed today and all season,” WSU coach Colin Foster told GoShockers.com. “We created opportunities down the stretch to win, but Charlotte just played a little better down the stretch.”

Meanwhile, the WSU men’s tennis team, which finished last in the 12-team conference in the regular season, lost its opening-round match at the AAC championship event in a 4-1 setback to No. 5 seed Tulsa this past Thursday.

The Shockers (5-18) claimed their lone point through winning the doubles point, as the team of Vanja Hodzic and Marcelo Sepulveda and Luke Bracks and Alejandro Jacome both rallied to win in tiebreakers.