The boys bowling team went undefeated in regular season match play and snagged third place at the 6A state tournament. The girls also did well achieving a first place finish at regionals and an eighth place finish at the state tournament.
The members of the team seemed to be contempt with their performances, both individually and as a team.
“We bowled very well throughout the regular season,” freshman Matthew Hedden said.
“We absolutely did well throughout the regular season going undefeated,” junior Ryker Percival said.
The girls team mostly agreed with the boys.
“We were having fun and bowling as a team,” freshman Madisyn Hansen said.
A few bowlers slightly deviated from the rest of the team.
“The boys did well throughout the season, but I don’t think that the girls did as well,” senior Krista Jenkins said.
However, the members of the team felt that their state performance could have been stronger.
“We bowled okay [at state]. It seemed that we had some nerves going into it. We had a couple of rough games at first, but we pulled it together and we finished strong,” senior Blaine Peninger said.
“State was our second best score of the season. We bowled well, but the other teams simply bowled better,” senior Justin Ash said.
The most important part is that the team was having fun.
All seven of the interviewed bowlers agreed that they enjoyed bowling for the high school team this season.
Hansen found it instructional.
“I got to learn new bowling skills that I probably wouldn’t have learned if I didn’t participate with the team,” Hansen said.
Although the team had a great season, there is a sort of ‘cloud of disapproval’ that the bowlers feel from a lot of the non-bowlers in the school, and they may be right.
A survey of the 331 students shows that 8% of students did not know that the high school had a bowling team.
Most of the bowlers consider bowing a sport, but they do not think that the rest of the school feels the same way.
“Bowling is absolutely a sport. There is no other sport that takes the same amount of focus and mental stability that bowling does, and I think there is a large majority of students that think we’re a joke, which is unfortunate since bowling can teach you a tough mental game which you can utilize to your advantage in many other areas of life,” Percival said.
Some believe bowling is a sport because of the on-the-fly physical adjusting necessary to be successful.
“Bowling involves a lot of physical skill to bowl well, like being able to adjust different parts of your body to change your shot. Your mental game has to be strong, and you require self confidence,” Peninger said.
Some of the bowlers think that it depends on the person.
“I have a lot of friends with that joking ‘vibe’ but they’re also very proud of me and they do take it serious, but I do feel as though they’ll joke about it. People I don’t know with probably joke about it, but they’re not mean about it,” junior Noah Brooks said.
A few of the bowlers disagree.
“I don’t think bowling is a sport since it’s less physically demanding compared to the other activities that I’m involved in,” Jenkins said.
While 9% of students did not know that the school had a bowling team, the other results of a survey given to the student body may pleasantly surprise the bowlers.
The survey showed that 79% of students think that bowling is a sport and 64% think that members of the bowling team are athletes.
These results may be surprising to some of the bowlers as most of them agreed that they felt a sort of ‘ostracization’ due to their membership to the bowling team.
Hopefully the bowlers will be surprised by these results and use them as motivation to further improve their game so that they can take home the first place trophy next year.
“Bowling might not appear a sport at first to a spectator, but it does require a lot of focus, execution, and mental knowledge of the sport to be successful,” Brooks said.
Article by Justin Pechanec
