Balanced attack leads Belleville East to boys sectional title

Belleville East senior David Barrett-Ness averaged better than 231 for six games to lead a balanced Belleville East to the championship of the Illinois High School Association Collinsville Boys Sectional Bowling Tournament on Saturday at Camelot Bowl.

The Lancers, who posted a three-pin win over O’Fallon at the Belleville East Regional a week ago, finished play Saturday with a total of 6,519 pins, 70 more than runner-up Columbia, which finished with 6,449. The win earns the Lancers a return trip to the IHSA Boys State Bowling Tournament, which begins Friday at St. Clair Bowl in Fairview Heights.

In addition to the 1,390 pins put up by Barrett-Ness, the Lancers also got great efforts from Jake Gray (1,328), Doug Gray (1,296) and Kurtis Murphy (1,295), as East led a group of six metro-east-area schools that earned a trip to the state finals.

Second-place Columbia was led by sophomores Jacob Amos (1,339) and Justin Budde (1,294).

O’Fallon, in search of a sixth-straight top-five finish at the IHSA state finals, placed third (6,346), while Civic Memorial (6,158), Triad (6,150) and Mascoutah (6,145) also qualified for the first day of the state finals.

Matt Toohey (1,335) and Andrew Orf (1,328) led the O’Fallon attack, while Gavin Pisetta (1,354) led Triad and Bryan Stevens (1,306) led Mascoutah.

Highland senior Collin Korte won the individual championship and will be a frontrunner Friday after finishing with a six-game score of 1,470 pins. Other local individual bowlers moving into the state finals were Christian Bertoletti (1,353), of Roxana; Clayton Hartman (1,349), of Collinsville; Tyler Hunter (1,344), of Freeburg; and Sam Watson (1,315), of Belleville West.

This story was originally published January 22, 2017 at 12:26 AM with the headline "Balanced attack leads Belleville East to boys sectional title."