One last time, Perry Cuccaro drew back his right arm and shattered the fragile stillness with a strike. Ten pins clattered to the ground on Cuccaro’s third-to-last shot of the third game of Westfield’s third match.
Call it an exclamation point.
The Blue Devils, the No. 1 seed in the Union County Tournament, soared to their fourth straight county title with a relaxed win over No. 6 Rahway in the championship match after a semifinal win over No. 5 Linden and a quarterfinal win over No. 8 Union.
“It was one of our missions this season,” Westfield head coach Ralph Corey said, to win the county tournament. “We’d been a little inconsistent in the first half of the season,” he added. “But these guys work. They come to every practice. We just keep working and keep working. And the most important part is just believing in yourself.”
Westfield, which earned the top seed in Tuesday’s qualifying round, swept each best-of-five Baker match. For the second year in a row, the Blue Devils didn’t drop a single game in the county tournament.
“I mean, it’s unbelievable that we’re able to sustain nine straight games,” Gabe Dayon said. “I told the team, ‘hey, it takes nine games to win. Let’s just win all nine to start, we don’t have to put more pressure on ourselves.’”
Despite its overall dominance, Westfield endured a couple close games as it romped through the tournament. In the third game of the semifinal against Linden, Westfield left the first two frames open. “I felt nervous in the first two frames,” Cuccaro said. A succession of strikes dispelled that worry. Westfield eked out the game, advancing to the next round.
In Westfield’s first game of the day, a furious Union rally, consisting of six consecutive strikes, had the Blue Devils sweating. But Cuccaro sent the final three pins thudding into the backstop to secure a 194–192 Westfield victory.
Things went smoothly from there. Yet the pressure cooker of the Baker format exacted its toll.
“The pressure is much higher,” Corey said. “What we kept talking about was staying clean, meaning strikes and spares. And then just setting up the next guy. And that’s what they did today.”
In the Baker format, teams bowl a collective game. Each of a team’s five bowlers rolls two frames. The first team to win three out of five games advances to the next round.
The tournament went to script for the top-seeded Blue Devils. Not, though, for rival Scotch Plains-Fanwood, the No. 3 seed and the fourth-ranked team in the state. And not for Roselle Park, the No. 2 seed.
The Raiders and the Panthers were both eliminated by Rahway, the tournament’s Cinderella. Rahway, which made its first-ever appearance in the UCT championship match, stunned its first two opponents in five-game thrillers that attracted the entire building’s attention. Eyes swiveled to the marauding Rahway Indians as the upsets unfolded, and a loose half-circle formed around their lanes. Rahway’s energy suffused the bowling alley.
“I knew we were a good team,” Rahway head coach Darius Singletary said. But “they even shocked me today. I thought we would win a match or two, but to get to the finals, to be honest with you, definitely shocked me.”
As the Panthers received their second-place trophy, two of the Rahway bowlers teared up, overcome by an apparent wave of mixed emotions.
Rahway was the day’s feel-good story. But the trophy belonged to Westfield. Singletary acknowledged a certain helpless feeling as he and his team faced the Blue Devil onslaught.
“Westfield came out striking,” he said. “It’s hard to beat a strike. There’s no defense in bowling.”
“We started shooting strikes in a row,” Dayon said. “In this team format, man, it’s contagious.”
Westfield’s mainstays, Dayon and Cuccaro, executed. But the lesser-heralded others, Micah Berger and Dylan Scanlon and especially Ben Hsu, stepped up big. Hsu was unflustered by Westfield’s few roadblocks. When the Blue Devils were struggling, Hsu was their spark. When the Blue Devils were on fire, Hsu was their stoker.
One magical circus shot headlined Hsu’s fantastic night. With two pins standing on opposite sides of the lane, Corey advised Hsu to “just get one,” to take the one pin and move on, to accept the open frame.
Hsu decided differently.
He rolled the ball at the leftmost pin, sending it ricocheting sideways off the opposite wall and into the other pin, like there was a higher power tugging the strings. The impossible spare encapsulated the team’s fantastic night. On Friday at 3 p.m., four Westfield bowlers—Cuccaro, Dayon, Hsu, Berger—will attempt to maintain that momentum when they compete in the Union County Individual Tournament.
On Thursday, though, there was one beatific moment that outshone the rest.
After the trophy presentation, the victorious Westfield bowlers headed outside, where a gentle drizzle drifted down. They camped outside the door and craned their necks to watch for their coach.
Eventually he arrived, jacket zipped up, backpack on, smile lingering. Corey passed through Jersey Lanes’s doors, into the night and into an ambush.
His bowlers burst from their hiding places, water bottles in their hands, and sprayed their coach. Corey retreated behind the doors, futilely trying to block the spray of water with his hands as the smile stretched wider across his face.
So there they were, in the darkness and in the rain, hopping around on the parking lot’s cracked pavement. Howling with delight.
