SIOUX CITY, Iowa – Anchored by strong performances from Aidan Tesdall and Devyn Coleman, both Avila bowling teams earned one of the best tournament placements of their inaugural seasons thus far: the Avila women placed seventh in their 12-team field while the men placed eighth at the 2021 Mustang Invitational in Sioux City, Avila’s final event of the 2021 portion of the season.
Both Eagle teams returned to action for the first time in nearly a month, just in time for a fairly standard setup at the Mustang Invite hosted by Morningside. The event began with six traditional team games on Saturday, followed by four blocks of four Baker-style games, for a total of 16 games, on Sunday. With such a small field of entrants, only the top four teams advanced to the single-elimination knockout bracket on Sunday afternoon, and though neither Eagle team qualified for that, both teams fared very well in their return to the lanes.
The Eagle men had a solid showing Saturday, putting up a score of 900 or better as a team twice and finishing the day in 8th place. The Eagles were locked in a close head-to-head battle with Peru State in one match, but a Caleb Wangler spare to close out the ninth frame set Avila up for victory in the tenth.
Aidan Tesdall had one of his best performances of his freshman campaign on Saturday, firing off a 232 in Avila’s fourth game and leading the Eagles with an average of 177.8, a top 25 average among the field. Evan Serrage came in second on the team with an average of 173, knocking down just two more pins than Wangler on the day. Both of those guys finished in the top 40 of a 90-man field, as did Wesley Smith, who tossed a 210 in game five.
On the women’s side, Devyn Coleman once again paced the pack, leading the Eagles with an average of 175.2, the sixth-best mark in the entire field. She was one of just a handful of women to shoot a game north of 200 with a 201 in game five; Bailey Stephan was another after she opened her weekend with a 204 in Avila’s first game. Joanne Alibayan narrowly beat out Stephan for second on the team with an average of 157.8, a top 25 mark in a field of nearly 70 bowlers.
Interestingly enough, even after 16 Baker games on Sunday, neither team’s placement from Saturday changed: the Avila women placed seventh after both days while the men placed eighth. Though neither team made the knockout rounds like they have before, those finishes were some of Avila’s best thus far in the teams’ inaugural seasons: the men…
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