Capturing Crystal
The Wichita State women's bowling team captured the American Bowling Congress/Women's International Bowling Congress Sport Bowling Crystal Pin Award during the Intercollegiate Bowling Championship tournament at Riverlanes in Tulsa, Okla.
The Crystal Pin Award, sport bowling's signature honor, was presented April 16 by five-time Team USA member and Sport Bowling spokesperson Chris Barnes '92, along with ABC/WIBC director of research Neil Stremmel.
WSU — led by first-team All-Americans Anita Manns, Austin, Texas and Maggie Smith, Lenexa, Kan.; second-team All-American Clara Guerrero, Armenia, Colombia; and honorable mention All-American Olivia Sandham, Wichita — advanced to the IBC championship match, but fell to Pikeville College.
The Shocker men won their first two IBC matches, but were defeated by Saginaw Valley State University and then lost to Western Illinois to be eliminated from the tournament. The men's title was awarded to the University of Kansas.
— Anna Perleberg
Dream Year for Shocker Track
The Shocker women won the first outdoor team title in school history at the Missouri Valley Conference outdoor track and field championships this May in Normal, Ill., while the men snapped up the title for the third year in a row.
Sprinter Shannon Armstrong was the meet's MVP, an award that goes to the highest point scorer. He also was voted Most Outstanding Male Track Athlete by the league's coaches.
Armstrong, a junior from Chicago, won the 110-meter hurdles, 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash and was a member of the first-place 4x100 relay team. He faced difficult conditions in the hurdles, but still won in 14.15 seconds. "There was a strong head wind that was hard to deal with," he says. "If I had to, I would run in the snow for this event. It's not about the time, it's all about the points."
Iveta Grunte, a junior from Valmiera, Latvia, was named Most Outstanding Female Field Athlete of the meet after capturing first in the women's high jump and placing second to teammate Koya Webb in the heptathlon.
Paul Speer, a junior from Viola, Kan., won the decathlon and was named Most Outstanding Male Field Athlete.
— Kollen Long '90/96
An Elder Statsman
Joe Fox '52 made both work and play a matter of record.
His passion for order led him to the sidelines of many a WSU basketball game. Fox became a sports statistician for WU in 1948, typing a play-by-play of the game on his typewriter, and stayed for 50 years as one of "the four statsmen": Fox, Dale Greenlee '55, Ed Lomax '55 and Jim Strathe '56.
Eight eyes made sure not a move was missed: these men kept track of every rebound, shot and foul. Fox's stats team recorded Oscar Robertson's 50 points for Cincinnati in 1958 and Antoine Carr's Shocker record of 50 points in 1983. Even after stats were computerized, Fox still kept them for the university he loved.
Joe Fox, remembered "with an ever-present cigar stuffed into the corner of his smiling mouth," died April 13 in Newton, Kan.
— Anna Perleberg
But For Tennessee…
WSU's second-seeded men's tennis team won the MVC Championship April 25 at Bradley, 4-1 over top-seeded Drake, to earn the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Although defeated by the University of Tennessee May 15 in Fayetteville, Ark., to finish the year 16-12, coach Kevin Kowalik says, "We had a good match. Our hats off to Tennessee in how they played."
