March 21, 2011
DURHAM, NC - After the first strike came the fist pump. After the second came the tears.
Akira Turner hit back-to-back strikes in the 10th frame of Game 6 of the championship series to lift her Fayetteville State Lady Broncos to their second CIAA Championship in four years, closing out defending champion Bowie State on Monday afternoon at the CIAA Women's Bowling Championships at AMF Durham Lanes in Durham, NC.
Turner (Sr., Detroit, MI) and the Lady Broncos needed those two strikes to come from behind in the sixth game of the best-of-seven series as Fayetteville State (72-13) beat the Northern Division champion Lady Bulldogs 4-2 in the title series, a few hours after it had knocked them off in the quarterfinal round earlier in the morning.
It was a satisfying ending for Turner, named on Saturday as the CIAA's Player of the Year for the second consecutive season. Turner was a member of the Lady Broncos' 2008 title team as a freshman.
"When Coach (Bobby) Henderson recruited me, he had one job for me," said Turner. "And to finish that job and go out on top as a senior, it's just a wonderful and incredible feeling."
It was an emotional one as well for Turner, who was named the tournament's Most Valuable Player. She hit the first strike to open the 10th frame to put the Broncos in position to win, crouching down and pumping her fist toward the hardwood several times.
She then buried the second one, an explosive strike that effectively put the Lady Bulldogs away. That's when Turner's eyes began to moisten.
"It's just so overwhelming," Turner said of the moment she clinched the title for Fayetteville State.
The championship run was a brilliant one for a Fayetteville State team that had just five players - the requisite amount for team bowling - all season long. Four of those players - Turner, Jamie Donnelly (So., Fayetteville, NC), De'Andrea Bethea (Fr., Raleigh, NC) and Kelly Wakerhauser (Jr., Portage, WI) - finished the season as All-CIAA bowlers, with the fifth, Daisy Weishman, (Fr., Fayetteville, NC) more than adequately filling her role.
"The first thing I said to them when I brought them together this year was that none of them could get injured, sick or anything," said Fayetteville State coach Bobby Henderson, who now has two conference crowns to go with two runner-up finishes. "We've had girls bowl with the flu this year, but those were some of their best games. It's a testament to them that we could win with only five players."
But a big part of keeping the team together was Turner, who provided the veteran leadership needed for a team that featured talent that was prodigious, but young.
"She had to be the leader," said Henderson, who has won 10 division titles in his 11 years as coach of the Broncos. "And she was a tremendous leader."
"You have to stay motivated, you've got to push through, and it was a tough season," Turner said. "But nobody ever said it took more than five to win a game."
And the Broncos got considerable help throughout their lineup during the entire championship weekend. Fayetteville State led the pin count by nearly 400 pins over second-place Bowie State after the first two days of play on Saturday and Sunday, then put away Bowie State 4-1 in the quarterfinals before winning 4-2 in the finals.
"It's gratifying for me, but I think it's more gratifying for the Southern Division," Henderson of the championship. "I'll be the first to say that the Northern Division has a lot more than the South, and it's big just to have a Southern Division team in the finals. But to win it says a lot about our division and our program.
"At the same time, we had put up the numbers all year long. I needed our girls to realize that we were indeed the team to beat here."
Bowie State fell to the elimination bracket after the morning loss to the Broncos, then waited as Elizabeth City State needed a tiebreaker to clip St. Paul's to advance to the elimination finals. Bowie State, led by the CIAA's first 300-bowler Vera Diggs, then romped past the Lady Vikings in four quick games, setting up the rematch in the final.
But Fayetteville State, while not deep, was impressively balanced throughout its lineup. With Bethea, the CIAA's Rookie of the Year, leading off and Weishman, Wakerhauser, Donnelly and Turner rounding out the order, the Lady Broncos boasted the league's stiffest competition 1-through-5. Each bowler seemed to pick up the team with a big shot when it needed it the most, and Fayetteville State took a 2-0 series lead after wins of 187-156 and 182-164.
Bowie State got back into the match with its best game of the series, clipping Fayetteville State 192-185 in a tightly contested match. But the Broncos responded in Game 4, getting huge back-to-back strikes from Wakerhauser and Donnelly in the eighth and ninth frames, respectively, to push Fayetteville State to a 166-159 victory.
Again the Bulldogs came back, though, posting a score of 190 to the Broncos' 167 to get back within a game at 3-2.
But Bethea and Weishman had two crucial strikes in a row in the sixth and seventh frames to spark a late-game charge by the Broncos - a charge that Turner capped with her brilliant 10th frame against Diggs, who left the 10 pin standing on her first shot of the frame.
"That's the best thing about this team - we don't get down just because a pin doesn't fall," said Henderson. "We've said all along that we win as a team and we lose as a team, but we have to be there to pick each other up every time we need it."
It was a message Turner and Co. took to heart.
"Nobody was ever going to give us anything," Turner said. "You have to earn what you want.
"And we earned it."
