By Miranda Holloway
Sports Editor
Going into the Palatine Invitational, the girls’ bowling team had goals to meet and rivals to beat.
“We were excited, and we had our goals set to do better than we did at our previous tournament where we took seventh,” senior Whitney Schmidt said.
The girls bowling team spent their Saturday at AMF Bowling Lanes in Rolling Meadows competing in the Palatine Invitational where they finished second out of 16 from across northern Illinois.
The girls competed against teams such as Lockport, who they had lost to the previous weekend, and Schaumburg, their biggest conference competition.
“We were glad to beat them by such a large amount,” head coach Greg Troyer said.
During previous trips to the invite, the team had placed consistently in eighth and ninth. Troyer attributes their success to a consistent effort throughout the tournament.
“We never really had a bad game,” Troyer said. “We were pretty much consistent all day long.”
If one girl had a poor frame, another member of the team was always ready to make up for it with a higher score.
“It feels really good, but we knew we were going to be a strong team this year,” Schmidt said.
The girls started off the morning slow with 10 splits in the first game and shot an 883. The team came back with two games of 950 and 930.
Assuming that they were sitting somewhere around fifth place during lunch,  the team learned that they where standing in second place after morning games.
“We got pumped up a little bit for the afternoon,” Troyer said.
A strong team effort was needed to hold the spot, however.
The team’s higher scorers included Junior Allison Walsh who finished third out of about 100 bowlers. She started the day slowly bowling a 161 and having two splits in her first game.  She came back while bowling a high game of 246 and having an average of 207.
Senior Mary Styzek finished 13 overall with a high game of 211 and bowled consistently all day.
The team will head to the Plainfield North Strike Fest and will compete in a field of 44 teams. Schmidt hopes that the teams consistency will carry over into the tournament.
“I think we are going to build off our second place win, and we are just going to keep getting better and [have] more confidence on our abilities,” Schmidt said