Sept. 30, 2011
Vanderbilt’s NCAA runner-up bowling team begins its season Sunday afternoon with the start of practice. The Commodores return four members from their NCAA starting five, including Brittni Hamilton, Jessica Earnest and Samantha Hesley who each earned All-America honors last season.
The team’s first competition comes Oct. 22 at the annual Alabama A & M Tri-Meet. Here are some notes about the team and a few events that occurred during the off-season.
- Sarah O’Brien has successfully recovered from her second hip operation and appears poised to step back into the lineup. This procedure was done just weeks after the NCAA Tournament so that she would have months to rehabilitate. The Illinois junior finished last season with an outstanding tournament performance.
- There are five freshmen on the roster including last year’s Alberta E. Crowe Award winner, symbolic of the nation’s top high school bowler (Nicole Mosesso), and the program’s first left-handers (Rebeca Reguero and Natalie Goodman) since 2007.
- During the summer Jessica Earnest won a Gold Medal competing for Junior Team USA at the Pan American Youth Bowling Championship in the Dominican Republic.
- Brittni Hamilton won the Intercollegiate Bowling Championship singles title shortly after the end of the NCAA season before spending the bulk of her summer as an intern at Nashville’s Adventure Science Center. The Webster, N.Y. star later became the first collegian ever named to the Bowling Journal Magazine’s five-woman All-America first-team, which considered all female bowlers amateur or professional. She was named Vanderbilt’s Female Athlete of the Year in September.
- The program purchased its own Kustodian Ion Lane Machine, which allows the team to practice under ideal, tournament (sport shot) conditions. The Commodores now have the option of rotating lane-to-lane to work on different oil patterns and can change those patterns as they so choose.
- The team’s locker room at the Smyrna Bowling Center underwent a facelift with new graphics on its walls.
