TOWSON, Md. (February 10, 2023) – The Mount St. Mary's women's bowling team is off to a solid 4-1 start at the James Brown Invitational behind wins over #10 nationally ranked Maryland Eastern Shore, #19 Medaille, Saint Francis U and Alabama A&M. The lone loss for the Mountaineers came in the finale against #6 North Carolina A&T State.
 
The freshmen duo of Trishelle Leal Uribe and Aliza Shirk led the way for MSM posing identical 19.12 baker frame averages. All six Mountaineers that played Friday had above an 18.00 frame average. The Mountaineers currently sit fourth in the 11-team field.
 
#18 Mount: 1,058 | #10 Maryland Eastern Shore: 988
 
The Mountaineers started off strong with a 1,062 victory against the #10 Hawks of Maryland Eastern Shore. The match was relatively close before the Mount used the first eight strikes in a 249-200 game four advantage.
 
#18 Mount: 950 |Alabama A&M: 881
 
The first ever meeting between the Mountaineers and the Bulldogs went in the Mount's favor as a strong 237 game two and 205 game three proved enough to hang onto the victory.
 
#18 Mount: 972 | Saint Francis (PA): 908
 
Former Northeast Conference rivals squared off in the third match of the day with MSM defeating SFU 972-908. After falling behind 39 pins after game one the Mount took each of the next four games by 14 pins or more to cruise to the win.
 
#18 Mount: 921 | #19 Medaille: 920
 
The Mount defeated their next-door-neighbor in the recently released coaches' poll by one pin in a thrilling round four match. The four and five combo of Shirk and Junior Alyssa Alexander cleaned both their frames to two opens from Medaille to complete an improbable comeback.
 
#18 Mount: 924 | #6 North Carolina A&T: 951

A bid for an undefeated day was spoiled by the #6 Aggies of NCAT as both teams struggled thru some challenging transition. Leads in games two and three were spoiled by late opens that proved too much to overcome despite a 12-pin advantage over the final two games.
 
"Overall, today was a good start to the weekend," said head coach Kenneth DeGraaf. "We look really good on fresh and will look to go bigger and better tomorrow to open competition against a Morgan State squad that is scoring well. We hit some fast transitions we did not expect, but that is common on day one of competitions and just means we will have to learn from those experiences tomorrow. It was nice to get Aliza back for the first time since November. The scoring attack was balanced, but we will look for some individuals to pop-off tomorrow."
 
Competition will resume at 10:00 a.m. Eastern tomorrow with five traditional matches. All matches can be caught live on the team's Facebook page.