ADDISON, Ill. – The Notre Dame College men's and women's bowling squads traveled to Illinois on Jan. 13-14 for their first tournament of the 2024 calendar year. The teams braved the bitter subzero temperature and less than ideal conditions to travel to the Chicago area and bowl the Midwest Kegel Tier 1 Tournament. The tournament format was five regular games on Saturday and 20 baker team games on Sunday on very difficult lane patterns.

During Saturday's individual portion of the games, the women's varsity team struggled a bit on the lane patterns, as did many of their competitors. They finished day one of the individual games in 8th place out of 29 teams. During the regular games on Saturday, junior Olivia Johnson started out strong with a 217, and senior Hannah Klein matched that score in game two with a 217. Freshman Carly Jones led the team with a 901 five-game pin total score, averaging 180.2 for the day. Jones finished 19th among the women in the tournament. Right behind her was Klein, finishing 20th. On Sunday, the struggle for the ladies continued, not quite being able to find consistency throughout the day. They managed two games over 200 in their baker games, a 236 game in game three and a 202 game late in the day to help them move up to at least a top-ten finish.

The men's team had a similar experience as the women. Dealing with difficult lane conditions, on Saturday during regular games, the team finished Saturday's individual games in a good position in 11th place out of 38 teams. Leading the team was sophomore Aiden Compton, with a 211 average with two first games of over 230. Freshman Anthony Shields III chipped in with a 236 game and Joshua Dohm and Alex Etheredge finished off game five with games of 230 and 226 respectively. Day two continued to be somewhat of a struggle to find some consistency. The men landed in 17th overall for the tournament.

Both team's have an upcoming American Heartland tournament finale this upcoming Sunday, Jan. 28th.