McKendree women’s bowling team earns first NCAA tourney appearance

For the first time in program history, the McKendree University women’s bowling team will be competing for an NCAA championship.

The Bearcats were among eight at-large teams selected for the NCAA Women’s Bowling Championship to be held April 14-16 at Brunswick Zone Carolier in North Brunswick, N.J. McKendree was seeded sixth in the eight-team field. This will be the first NCAA Championship appearance for the Bearcats.

“I’m very excited and very proud of these young ladies,” McKendree coach Shannon O’Keefe said. “This is a true testament of how hard they worked and how much they believed in themselves from the first tournament of the year all the way through to this point.”

McKendree entered eight NCAA in-season tournaments in 2015-16 and won four of them while earning a runner-up finish in another.

The Bearcats capped that run last weekend by sweeping through the field to win the Central Missouri Invitational in Kansas City, Mo. McKendree also won top honors at Valparaiso University’s Crusader Classic in November, followed by consecutive victories in January at the Mid-Winter Invitational hosted by Arkansas State University and the KU Invitational at Kutztown University.

Joining McKendree at the 2016 NCAA Women’s Bowling Championship will be Nebraska, Arkansas State, Vanderbilt, Sam Houston State, Stephen F. Austin, Central Missouri and North Carolina A&T State. Nebraska, the defending NCAA champion, is the top seed.

“For all the hard work that we have put in to this point of the season, this is amazing and this is hard work paid off,” said senior Samantha Hagerman, a four-year varsity performer for McKendree. “I know we have a great group of girls this year and if we bring our focus and the talent that I know we have, we can give it a run.”

In head-to-head competition against NCAA opponents this season, McKendree is 59-35. The Bearcats won 20 of the 38 games against the seven other schools that qualified for the NCAA Championship.

Competition will begin with a qualifying round of head-to-head matches against each team in the field. Teams will then be seeded for bracket play based on their record during the qualifying rounds. After the qualifying rounds, teams will square off in best-of-seven Baker-format matches in double-elimination play.

The championship final will be aired live at 5:30 p.m. April 16 on ESPNU.

This story was originally published March 30, 2016 at 4:39 PM with the headline "McKendree women’s bowling team earns first NCAA tourney appearance."