The Fairleigh Dickinson University women's bowling team has once again swept the Northeast Conference weekly awards. Junior Danielle McEwan (Stony Point, NY/Stony Point) has been named the NEC Bowler of the Week for the fourth time, while freshman Liat Vizenfeld (Holon, Israel/Campus Kiryat Sharet) picks up her first NEC Rookie of the Week award.
McEwan is inching closer to acquiring a monopoly over the NEC Bowler of the Week award. Once again, FDU's anchor bowler accounted for the top frame average of any NEC competitor this past weekend and has her fourth weekly award this season to show for her latest performance.
The junior right-hander averaged 20.95 pins per frame in leading Fairleigh Dickinson to a 10-2 record and third-place finish at the Virginia Union Invitational. The statistics indicate McEwan was “locked in” throughout the entire course of the three-day event that featured a number of NTCA Top 20 teams. The third-year Knight struck on 55.9 percent of her attempts (95-for-170). She left only 15 opens out of 122 frames bowled for a .877 filled frames percentage.
McEwan posted a team-high 214.0 traditional game average over a five-match sample on the meet's second day. McEwan caught fire by throwing four consecutive strikes to secure 1043-1027 traditional team win over NEC rival Sacred Heart. In the very next match, an eventual 357-pin thumping of Cheyney, McEwan opened with nine consecutive strikes on her way to a 265 game.
McEwan also accounted for a team-high 1,486 pinfall over 72 baker frames.
Vizenfeld was phenomenal for Fairleigh Dickinson in what was only her second collegiate competition. The freshman, an Israeli who was cleared to compete by the NCAA in mid-November, posted a 20.34 frame average at the Virginia Union Invitational. She posted the ninth-highest traditional game average (197.0) of all individual competitors at the three-day tournament and was even better during the meet's baker play portion.
Helping the Knights to 10 match victories and a third-place finish in the highly-competitive field, Vizenfeld filled 87.7 percent of frames bowled and cashed in on more than half of her strike attempts. The first-year Knight threw 70 strikes in 131 chances (.534) over the course of the weekend. Unfazed by the quality of competition, Vizenfeld threw a 198 game in a traditional match against No. 4 Central Missouri. One match later, she turned in a 221-pin performance against NEC rival, and the nation's No. 9 ranked team, Sacred Heart. She started in all of FDU's matches at the Virginia Union Invitational two weeks after making her collegiate debut at the UMES Hawk Classic.
The Knights break for the holidays before resuming action at the St. Francis College New Year's Knockdown in January.
