For a second straight season and the third time since 2018, the Forest City girls bowling team competed at the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union state championships. The Indians were part of history before they even arrived in Waterloo this morning. This year, the CO-ED championships went to a new format. Instead of individual qualifiers and team qualifiers competing in the exact location at the same time and members of team qualifiers competing for individual awards, bowling would have two separate tournaments. Today was the team tournament, and eight Class 1A teams of boys and eight Class 1A teams of girls converged on Cadillac XBC.
Forest City bowling coach Charlie Frascht:
The tournament started with the seeding phase. All eight teams bowled 15 bakers games. (A Baker Game is when multiple bowlers combine to bowl one game.) The team with the highest Baker Game score would be the #1 seed and so on.
The Forest City girls knocked down a total of 2539, which was good for the sixth seed, and forced the Indians to match up with five-time defending Class 1A champions, Louisa-Muscatine, who earned the #3 after knocking down 2767 pins in their Baker Games.
In the quarterfinal round, the teams would play a best of five series Baker Games.
The other matchups paired #1 seed Clarinda vs. #8 Central DeWitt, #2 Camanche vs. #7 Dubuque Wahlert, and #4 Vinton-Shellsburg vs. #5 Clarke.
Forest City fell behind early, losing the first game 181 to 124, Forest City improved in the second game to 168, but the Falcons also improved, knocking down 221 pins. Forest City was down to their last match but stayed alive with senior Chiara Thompson’s help with three straight strikes, helping the Indians win 168 to 160. Forest City again needed a win in the fourth game, but Louisa-Muscatine bowled their best game a 225, and Forest City bowled a 180 to fall in the match, 3-1.
The Falcons went to the semifinal finals and knocked off #2 seed Camanche, before heading to the championship, where they swept the #1 seed, Clarinda, for their sixth straight Class 1A title.
Forest City will graduate four of their six members and will need to reload before making another run at their third straight state appearance next winter.
Tomorrow the Indians will turn their attention to the individual tournament where three members of the girls’ team and Jorden Trunkhill from the boys’ team will bowl for their own individual awards.
The Forest City girls include seniors Haley Wood and Chiara Thompson, and junior Kali Johnson.
The Indian bowlers will be at a new bowling alley for the individual tournament, Maple Lanes. Maple Lanes was closed in February 2020, after a fire destroyed the building, and now the rebuilt business will play host to the induvial CO-ED bowling tournament, action starts at 9AM.
