DAYTON, Ohio -- The Notre Dame College bowling teams traveled to the Dayton, Ohio area to bowl in the Orange and Black Tournament, last weekend. The format for this year's version of the tournament was new as the Orange Tournament bowled on Saturday and the Black Tournament bowled on Sunday. The Orange Tournament was a marathon-like tournament that consisted of 36 baker games, where five bowlers share one game for the entire day. The Black tournament was a more conventional five individual games and 10 baker games.

The varsity women were bowling on a challenging oil pattern, along with 14 other varsity and junior varsity teams. In the Orange Tournament, the Falcons bowled to a manageable team average of 172 for the entire day. Notre Dame finished a very respectable 3rd in the tournament, not really in the hunt for the first place trophy, but stayed ahead of most of the field.

On day two for the women, the Falcons bowled on the more conventional format with five individual games. Once again, the lane pattern played difficult for the entire field, meaning the field overall was going to be a lower scoring field. NDC stayed patient, converting spares when the strikes were not falling and came away with second place, behind the host of the tournament, the University of Pikeville. In the individual games, we had three of the top five bowlers in the varsity field. Senior Hannah Klein finished 3rd and led the team with a 943 pinfall, a 188 average. Junior Rachel Foreback finished 4th, with a super consistent 927 total, averaging 185. Finishing fifth for the varsity, Senior Sarah Benedict rolled a 922 series, averaging 184 for her four games. Also rolling two games over 200 and finishing 16th in the field was Olivia Johnson. On the junior varsity side, Olivia Brace finished 28th in the overall field of approximately 120 athletes.

For the men, competing with a total of nine teams in the challenging 36 baker game format, managed to finish 4th. They averaged 176 for the day on the challenging pattern.

On day two, the men did much better, finishing 4th in a 12 team field. They started slowly in the regular games, picked up some momentum in the remaining regular games, slowly increasing their scores.

For the individuals, senior Michael Wiese finished seventh overall, finishing strong in the regular games with a 236, 238, and 226 game to get to a 208 average for the day. In eighth place was Sophomore Alex Etheredge, who overall had a strong day and averaged 205. Sophomore Aiden Compton finished 24th in the field with a 194 average. Sophomore Josh Dohm rolled two games over 200. On the junior varsity team, Anthony Shields rolled a team high 245 game in route to a 949 series, averaging 190 for the day, and finishing 30th among all bowlers and 7th among the junior varsity scores.

Notre Dame will head to Canton, Mich. for the American Heartland I Tournament on Oct. 28-29.