D'Iberville, Miss. | Alabama State continued its march to a regular-season Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) Championship on Friday with three wins on the opening day of play at the SWAC East Round-Up.

The Lady Hornets (56-39, 14-3 SWAC) are still in first-place following Friday's action. Their 191.24 average pins per game and 18,168 total pins are also tops in the league. Prairie View A&M and Jackson State are in second-place with identical 12-4 marks.

The Lady Hornets bowled a cumulative 1,000-plus pins in four-of-five matches on the day en route to a 3-2 record at Cypress Lanes.

Alabama State opened the day with a strong 1,059 total pins against Southern (977) to grab an early victory. The Lady Hornets continued to roll by throttling Grambing State, 1,087 - 641 in their second match before finally faltering to Jackson State 1,007 to 962. Alabama State then dropped a heartbreaker to Prairie View A&M 1,167 - 1,089 but quickly bounced back by closing out the day with a 1,014 - 913 win over Texas Southern.


Noteworthy
The Lady Hornets are currently in third-place at the event but have the highest total pin count (5,211) and average pin count (208.4).

Allison Sledge (second place), Haley Young (fourth), Gabrielle Hosien (12th) and Bailee Chapman (14th) give Alabama State four competitors in the top-15.

Quotable
"We had a great day today from a score standpoint but a rough day in the win-loss category," Alabama State head coach Andrew Chatmon said. "The ladies bowled really well today but we dropped a couple of tough ones - including Jackson state where we made some errors - and lost a big one to Prairie View A&M, who just bowled better than we did. We bowled good, they bowled great. We are still in first but must bounce back tomorrow."

What's next
The Lady Hornets will play Alabama A&M, Southern, Grambling State, Jackson State and Prairie View A&M in another round of Round Robin play on Saturday.

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