The girls Varsity bowling team ended the regular season in a small victory while tying for fourth in regionals and having two members move on to state. The boys ended in defeat placing ninth.

“They bowled very well. They tried hard all day and it showed,” head coach Robert Regan said. “The boys bowled very well as well. They’re just a lot of good bowlers across the state of Kansas, and the boys bowled one of their better days as well.”  

The boys Varsity team scored a total of 2,160: 529 coming from junior Nathaniel Chaput, 486 from sophomore Michael Moran, 567 from freshman Brandon Bragg, 515 from sophomore Avery Groover, 494 from freshman Andrew Davis and 478 from junior Logan Logback.

The girls Varsity team scored a total of 2,132: 611 from sophomore Alex Newell, 555 from Zoe Johnson, 511 from sophomore Mary Jane Benjamin, 455 from junior Riley Taylor and 413 from sophomore Khristine Thompson.

“The last tournament of the season, they all kind of pull together and bowled as a team,” Regan said. “For the first time all season, we saw them coming together, and they’re all speaking of joining the youth league, and wanting to do it as a team so hopefully that will get them going in the right direction.”

Newell placed fourth out of the event, qualifying her to move onto state along with Johnson, who placed ninth out of the event. Newell’s game scores were 182, 173 and 256, and Johnson’s were 176, 211 and 168.  

“I thought I did really good for how I bowled. I made some mistakes with picking up my spares but most of them were single pins which was the good part,” Newell said. “I came back in the last game and finished fourth.”

Despite having only two bowlers qualify for state, there were a lot of other bowlers who were very close to qualifying, such as Bragg who missed qualifying by only 50 pins. Bragg was the highest-scoring player for the boys Varsity team and tied for 20th place.

Despite the end of the regular season, there are still some improvements that will be made for Newell and Johnson in order to get ready for state.  

“We just need to work on some timing with Alex, and just getting her to roll the ball across her target,” Regan said. “I think she’s trying hard, but I think sometimes she’s trying too hard, she needs to relax and learn to focus a little more and be consistent with your target, and we will work on that this week.”