Late run nets Brice third at state

TACOMA — Tough lane conditions and a competitive field weren’t enough to deter a last-ditch state championship run for Moses Lake High School’s Shanice Brice at the Narrows Plaza and the 2010 Class 4A state bowling championships in Tacoma on Friday.

However a slow start was not quite enough for Brice to overcome as she finished third with a 1,065 score, only 23 pins behind Shannon Dexter of Emerald Ridge.

Wenatchee’s Brooke Tate took second with a 1,086.

“At the half she was down 137 pins,” Moses Lake coach Billy Brice said of Shanice’s place after three games. “But her last two games she shot a 206 and a 219. In the 219 game if she could have gotten a strike in the ninth and a double in the tenth she might have won it but she just missed.”

Shanice Brice recorded scores of 145, 160, 182, 153, 206, and 219, in order. Her sixth game score of 219 was the competition’s second highest.

The meet didn’t consist of the usual high scores at this level of competition with the lanes being set to a higher standard.

“This was a professional condition for the girls,” Billy Brice said. “I think the shot was a little extreme and everybody was frustrated with the condition. They wanted the girls to know what its like to bowl at a higher level, but all it was was a frustrating shot. No body really bowled well. These are high school girls but Shanice found a way to score. It was ground and pound pretty much all day.”

Of the 56 individual competition bowlers, four hail from the Big 9 with two Kennewick bowlers complementing the efforts of Shanice Brice and Tate.

“That says the Big 9 is definitely competitive,” Billy Brice said. “Kennewick ended up finishing second and were 13 points short of winning it so we had a good weekend.”