No. 2 Vanderbilt Bowling earned first place at the Stallings Invitational from Feb. 28–March 2. The tournament, hosted by No. 6 North Carolina A&T, featured 11 programs — including six ranked teams. Alongside January’s Prairie View A&M Invitational, the competition is the Commodores’ second first-place finish of the season.
“I feel like this weekend was a lot different [from Prairie View A&M] because it was definitely a lot more challenging,” sophomore Haley Lindley said. “We knew that 190 [pins] was a good game even though typically that’s not what we aim for.”
Vanderbilt began the tournament weekend with a strong start, finishing the opening day with a 4-1 record and standing in second place by pin count. The day — which began with a lineup of Isabel Allen, Lindley, Victoria Varano, Kailee Channell and Sydney Bohn — featured wins over No. 16 Mount St. Mary’s (979-902), Alabama A&M (922-900), No. 18 Maryland-Eastern Shore (1,075-901) and Belmont Abbey (1,040-900), as well as a lone loss to No. 15 Duquesne (966-939). Only No. 3 Jacksonville State boasted a better scoring average after the first day (203.6 versus 198.2).
The Commodores had a largely similar scoring output on March 1 but managed to end the day with a perfect record. Wins came over Lewis University (966-882), Howard (937-936), North Carolina A&T (979-979, tiebreaker) and Southern University (989-822). The Black and Gold also had a bye match in Round 5 and walked out of it with 1,031 pins.
Alyssa Ballard led the Commodores in the traditional matches, starting the day with only 179 pins but quickly shooting up the leaderboards with 243, 212, 244, 208 and 226 in the remaining games. For her efforts, Ballard took home the tournament’s MVP award, given to the player with the highest traditional match average.
“I’m so happy for Alyssa [Ballard],” head coach John Williamson said. “She’s had moments when she’s been very good… but I think this was her most complete weekend.”
On the final day of the competition, Vanderbilt played one more traditional match against Jacksonville State to determine seeding for bracket play. Though the Commodores narrowly fell short, 992-980, they still entered bracket play in second place — once more behind the Gamecocks.
With a spot in the championship match on the line, the Commodores squared off in a Baker best-of-seven rematch against Duquesne. Neither team played particularly well through large stretches of the series, as several games were decided below the all-important 200-pin mark. Eventually, behind a lineup of Varano, Kaylee Hitt, Ballard, Saphyre Nofuente and Bohn, the Commodores broke through and finished off the Dukes 4-2.
Linsley commented after the tournament about what made it difficult.
“The way the oil pattern broke down,” Lindley said. “There wasn’t one specific line that you could play. I feel like in a lot of the patterns we bowl on, it’s pretty easy to tell where you need to start playing and then make your moves off of that — but I feel like there were a couple [of] different options for this weekend.”
Having bested Duquesne, only Jacksonville State stood before Vanderbilt en route to the season’s second first-place trophy. Williamson opted to play Varano, Hitt, Ballard, Lindley and Bohn to start the biggest moment of the weekend — and, with victories in Games 1 and 2, the move was largely vindicated.
After a 211-193 loss in Game 3, the Commodores didn’t have to score any better to win Game 4, doing so by a margin of 193-171. With a tournament championship on the line, however, the Commodores brought their best ball to Game 5. First came a strike, then another and another. Six strikes came in the game, but it wouldn’t be until Bohn hit a spare in the second half of the 10th frame that a victory fell into place. By a score of 226-225, Vanderbilt would win Game 5 and, with it, the series.
“I think we are who we are and we’re pretty good,” Williamson said. “It sort of depends on if that’s good enough. My hope is that when we get to the postseason, there’s another gear. We set the bar pretty high; so, if someone’s going to beat us, they’re going to have to play pretty well.”
Vanderbilt Bowling will be back in action when it hosts the Music City Classic from March 14-16. The Smyrna-based tournament is one of the year’s largest and will serve as the Commodores’ final tournament of the 2024-2025 regular season.
