COLUMBUS — It was not the dream finish the defending state champions had in mind.
“You come down as defending champs and there’s some pressure there. You just think you can get by it,” Triway coach Corby Anderson said. “You can sit and tell them all you want to relax, but they know when they’re down.”
After entering match play as the No. 1 seed Friday by 95 pins, the defending champion Titans were swept in the first-round of match play by eventual runner-up Sandusky Perkins 3-0 during the OHSAA Division II State Girls Bowling Championships at Wayne Webb’s Columbus Bowl.
After rolling up 3,327 total pinfall during qualifying, including not shooting under 160 in the three Baker System games, Triway had games of 124, 170 and 151 in the loss to Perkins’ 158-182-172. The Titans placed fifth overall in the final standings.
Conotton Valley topped Perkins 3-2 in the title match, with the Rockets winning Game 5 182-168.
“It’s frustrating. For us to bowl like we did throughout qualifying, we looked like we should be that team again. And if it ends right there, we are,” Anderson said of the Titans, who swept Napoleon to capture the 2022 state title, losing just one game in three best-of-five Baker matches.
“It doesn’t matter that we led by a bunch of pins. You get in match play and it’s a different ball game.”
It marked the second time Perkins has stopped the Titans this season. The first came in the Division II Kickoff Classic at HP Lanes in Columbus in the opening tournament of the season.
It’s a fact that was not lost on Triway junior left-hander Emma Yoder, the defending Division II individual champion who finished ninth overall Friday with a 588 series.
“We just weren’t mentally there. Going into the first Baker game, we could tell,” Yoder said. “We lost to Perkins in the Kickoff Classic and to some people on our team we bowl a team that we’ve lost to in the past, they don’t like bowling them again.
“Instead of wanting them more, we become a bit timid from it. That was a major problem.”
Junior right-hander Addy Meshew, who finished as the state runner-up with a 663 series agreed the team wasn’t in the right mindset for match play.
“We just didn’t click the way we did last year. We came into this thinking that we’re going to repeat, and it didn’t fall our way,” Meshew said. “We missed a ton of makable spares and didn’t execute the fundamentals that we learned and practiced the entire season.”
Anderson saw the mental woes; he just didn’t know how to fix them.
“It’s human nature. They know something’s not right here and they are trying to make something happen,” Anderson said. “That’s when you have to take a deep breath and go back to basics.
“We all start second-guessing the shots we’re making. We tried to tell a couple of them during practice that they were throwing bombs, but now they’re thinking the ball’s not working. That’s in your own mind.”
MESHEW, YODER ARE ALL-OHIO
Meshew came out strong in Game 1 with a 259 as Wooster was third overall. But she struggled in Game 2 with a 166.
“I just wasn’t in the right mental state. I came off that high of throwing 250 and was making the same shots and executing the same way,” Meshew said. “But the transition with the oil caught me and I wasn’t in the right ball.
“I had a four-bagger in there and made the right ball change in the middle of the game, but I just didn’t pick up any spares.”
She admitted surprise at how she finished.
“After that second game, I thought there was no way,” said Meshew, who also was All-Ohio as a freshman, finishing fourth with 616 and following that with an 11th place finish last year to make honorable mention with 570.
“I shot 660, but I didn’t expect it to be anywhere near that high. Then they kept calling names and it was like, wow.”
Yoder started her day with 171 before rebounding with 236.
“I think I put a lot of pressure on myself that wasn’t needed. It didn’t feel like I did, but I could tell,” said Yoder, who took the Northeast District title with a 751 series. “I just didn’t have a free swing, and the things I normally focus on I wasn’t focusing on. I was just going up there and throwing.”
Anderson, Meshew and Yoder especially felt badly for seniors Danielle Densmore (536) and Lindsay Miller (544), who have bowled four years with the Titans.
“With our seniors, this is tough,” Anderson said. “But the games we shot were just ridiculous. We were in our own heads and it’s frustrating to be sitting there and you can talk until you’re blue in the face, but there’s nothing you can do.”
The Titans will return Meshew, Yoder and sophomore Kennedy Finley (495), but will have to break in a new group.
“We will have a team of four of us for sure,” Yoder said, “but it will be weird since Danielle and Lindsay have been there since we were freshmen,”
“We know we’re going be young,” Meshew said, “but I know we can do it. We just have to work at it the way we did last year.”
Up until those final Baker games.
“They have to understand how tough the lanes are getting. They were doing what we needed to do,” Anderson said. “But sometimes Bakers are a funny thing. You can get rolling and roll right through them. If not, you’re trying to press too much.”
And that’s when the mental game comes into play.
