ABERDEEN — Entering Thursday’s Sandhills Athletic Conference championship tournament as the No. 3 seed, the Richmond Senior High School boys’ bowling team stayed locked into that spot.
The Raiders competed in both the team and individual tournaments, taking third overall in the team event, qualifying them for the state championship tournament.
With their performance at the Sandhills Bowling Center, the Raiders returned to the postseason after missing the cut by 17 pins during the 2023-24 season.
However, unlike last season, Richmond did not have any individual qualifiers for the state competition.
“It’s always a goal at the start of the season to qualify for states,” head coach Chris Larsen said. “The guys were able to battle it out and earn the third-place spot to get us back to the state championship meet.
“There were definitely some frames we left open, especially in our second match,” he continued. “But I’m proud of the guys and their efforts. It’s great for our seniors to be able to end their careers with a chance to win a state title.”
Raiders take third in conference team championship
Richmond opened the team tournament against No. 6 Union Pines High School and followed that with matches against No. 2 Scotland and No. 4 Hoke County high schools.
The format for the tournament was a best-of-three games matchup, which didn’t factor in overall pin total like the regular season, which had four games per match.
The Raiders defeated Union Pines 2-0 to advance. The scores of those games were 138-103 and 179-126. Senior anchor Landon Summerlin was 6-for-6 in his frames, bowling four strikes and two spares.
In its second match against Scotland, Richmond was swept 2-0, which set up a battle with Hoke County for the pivotal third-place match.
Going all three games with the Bucks, the Raiders won the first and third games to earn the 2-1 victory. Scores were 250-190, 134-158 and 202-167.
Richmond closed all but one of its frames in the first game, bowling eight strikes and two spares for a single-game season-high 250 pins.
In the final game, senior Jabari Douglas had two strikes, junior Azariah Daniel had a strike and a spare, junior Owen Hancock rolled one strike, senior Landon Taylor added a spare and Summerlin was a perfect 4-for-4 with four strikes to ice the victory.
Ten Raiders bowl in individual championship
With the team guaranteed to move on in the postseason, 10 Raiders tried their hand at making the individual tournament.
Rolling three games apiece, the top 10 bowlers based on the combined score of those games made the tournament.
None of Richmond’s bowlers finished in the top 10. Hancock was Richmond’s closest finisher, bowling a score of 541 pins (171, 199, 171). He missed the cut by 25 pins.
Other top individual scorers for the Raiders were Taylor (529), Daniel (479), Summerlin (470), senior Ahjujuan Ewing (446) and Douglas (437).
Rounding out the team’s effort were freshman Mason Taylor (382), junior Tate Craven (332), junior Carter Visingard (329) and senior Dazion Moselsy (241).
The state tournament will be held Friday at the Sandhills Bowling Center and begin at 9 a.m.
