Harlem hangs on to win 6th girls state bowling championship

By Bob Balgemann
REPORTER
There was plenty of drama Saturday afternoon as the 2016-17 girls state bowling championship wound down at The Cherry Bowl.
1. Team-wise, Harlem was leading the one and only remaining challenger, Lockport Township, by 28 pins with 10 games left to bowl.
2. Individually, Harlem sophomore Kayla Verstraete had pulled to within 21 pins of overtaking first-place Jessica Soskich of Buffalo Grove.
When all was said and done the Lady Huskies held on to win their sixth state championship since 2000, by a scant 38 pins. And in the other cliff-hangar, the Lady Bisons’ Soskich edged Verstraete by 60 pins to become a state champion in her own right.
Harlem jumped off to a big lead on Friday, in the preliminaries at nearby Cherry Valley. The Lady Huskies were up by 189 pins over second place O’Fallon. Lockport was a distant third at that point, trailing by 319 pins.
Individually, the Lady Huskies were led by Ver-straete with three-game 716 series, followed by another sophomore, Becca Hager-man, at 709. Each started the tournament with a 268 single game.
At the end of Day 1, Har-lem remained atop the leader board but its advantage had shrunk to 70 pins. Lockport emerged from the pack and had a firm hold on second place. O’Fallon was trailing by 369 pins.
The Lady Porters shot 1,075 first thing Saturday morning to move into first place, 28 pins ahead of Harlem. Then they rolled a 1,060 to increase the difference to 83 pins. But the Lady Huskies bounced back in what proved to be a pivotal third game with a 1,069, to 975 for Lockport, and they were back in first place, this time by 11 pins. Hagerman sparked the surge with a 245 single game, followed closely by junior Stephanie Richards with a 235.
The final moments
Lockport, state champion in 2015, began the afternoon session by slipping below the 1,000 mark, with a

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