Girls Bowling: Jeffrey leads Romeoville to team title at Steelmen Invite
By Steve Millar For Sun-Times Media December 22, 2012 6:20PM
Updated: January 24, 2013 6:36AM
All Romeoville’s girls bowling team wanted for Christmas was a repeat championship at the Steelmen Invite.
The Spartans got it, with Nicole Jeffrey repeating as individual champion in the process. Romeoville finished with a six-game total pinfall of 5,152 to nip Sycamore by 36 pins and win the six-team tournament at Crest Hill Lanes.
“It’s really exciting,” Jeffrey said. “At the beginning of the tournament, our coach (Mike Eccleston) told us to defend our title. I’m happy we did.”
The tournament was a two-team battle most of the way, with the Spartans leading Sycamore by 84 pins entering the afternoon session before it was trimmed to 64 after four games and 28 entering the final game.
Romeoville put up 814 to Sycamore’s 806 in the last game to hold on for the crown.
“We knew (Sycamore) was close to us and we had to bowl better to win,” Jeffrey said. “Knowing we had competition helped us do better.”
Jeffrey didn’t have much competition in the individual race, finishing with 1,281 pins – 107 better than runner-up Kayla Webb, of Sycamore.
Jeffrey had two of the three highest scores of the tournament, with a 245 in Game 4 and a 238 in Game 2. She added a pair of 204 games.
“I just picked up most of my spares and I got a lot more strikes than usual,” Jeffrey said.
Joliet Central, led by Caitlin Magruder (5th, 1,076) and Samantha Limbach (6th, 1,043) finished third with 3,720 pins.
Stagg (3,065), Crete-Monee (2,996) and Rich Central (2,879) rounded out the field.
Romeoville’s Taylor Chazinski finished seventh with 1,034. Toni Carco (19th, 795) and Kaitlyn Maquera (20th, 782) contributed for the Spartans.
“It’s a team sport and Nicole got some help today,” Eccleston said. “We were bowling decent coming in and we knew we had a chance. It feels good to win this heading into Christmas.”
