Scotch Plains Rolls to Victory Over Oratory

Chalk up another impressive victory for the Scotch Plains-Fanwood High bowling team, as they cruised past Oratory Prep Wednesday afternoon 7-0.

The Raiders, ranked fourth in the county with just one loss, were paced by leadoff bowler Peter Citera, who finished with a match-high 693 pins that included a spectacular middle game of 276, when he recorded ten strikes.

"I told Pete before the second game that he needed to throw me ten strikes in a row," Coach James Mason said with a laugh. "He threw five and then five more. He had that one miss in the middle. Just a fantastic game."

As usual, anchor Mike Tufaro had another ultra-consistent day, rolling a 195, 197 and a 215 for a 607 series. Nick Stawicki finished with a 596 series, including a 225 in the third game. Greg Budis had a 562, with a high-game of 211 in the middle.

Mike Mannino stepped up from Junior Varsity to fill in for Katerina Nier and rolled an impressive 210 in the second game, finishing with a 518 series.

"Today, Mannino came up from the J.V. and did a nice job for us," Mason said. "He hit three strikes in the final frame of the last game. Every game it's somebody different. We're proud of everybody."

"We have a lot of fun as a team," continued Citera. "We do our best to create a lot of competition between ourselves to contribute to our success. We try to make the high fives loud and try to give each other as much encouragement as possible. We joke around a lot. It keeps the atmosphere loose."

The Raiders were just 24 pins shy of 3000 for the day, with their margin of victory at 1671 pins.

"They're in the middle of having a real good season and every match they come out and try to do better," Mason said. "They're working on their averages, we're looking down the road, we have some things coming, so they want to try and stay sharp."

The next challenge will come next week when they face Linden, another team battling for the top spot in the county standings.

"It's one of our big matches this year, one of our rivals," Stawicki said. "If we take two of three in the series from them, we'll be happy. If we take all three games from them, it will put us in a tie for third place."

With the success the Raiders are having, one wonders if it's tough to keep the team sharp as the season goes on.

"Not at all," Mason said. "This is what they love to do. They're really self motivated. I just come out and point them in the right direction and they're doing a great job for us."

But as Citera pointed out, it's not always easy being one of the kingpins in Union County.

"The interesting thing is, we have a 971 as our team average and we actually have the second highest average, yet we're in fourth place," he said. "A lot of teams bowl very well against us knowing we're a good team and sometimes they catch us when we're not looking."

For sure, no one will be sneaking up on them come county tournament time, which is scheduled to begin February 3.

"We're very excited,"  Citera said. "Mr. Mason said this is one of the best teams in the history of the high school. We want to do our best to hang up another county championship banner. The last one was hung up in 1981."