The Manhattan High School bowling team has a new coach. David Murph is a Human Resources Specialist in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as his day time job. Coaching is nothing new to him, however. 

“I’ve coached soccer, baseball and I’ve coached basketball for about three years,” head coach David Murph said.

This year, the bowling team had an unexpected turnout as far as the grade level of players that tried out. Murph held tryouts at the high school Monday through Thursday of last week.

“We have a lot of ninth graders, but we don’t have any 12th graders,” Murph said. “We didn’t really have any juniors that came back so a lot of the students on the team this year are ninth and 10th graders. [I’m really glad to] have a lot of freshmen on the team, because I think going forward, that’s going to help build the team.”

The new coach is excited to work with the MHS bowling team and has a few plans of his own to help the team members become better at this sport. 

“I’m looking forward to working with [the bowlers], and improving their skills as an athlete, so it’ll be interesting,” Murph said. 

Murph also has hopes to get his new crew to higher-level playing and maybe win a few trophies along the way.

“I would really love to see them be very competitive at all of [our] tournaments [this season] and at some point, qualify for the state tournament,” Murph said. That’s obviously one of our goals, and the other is for them to learn more about the sport and to have fun and enjoy it.”

Unlike some coaches, Murph has certain expectations for not only his athletes, but all of MHS athletes.

“I would love to see [more MHS] students on the team and I wish more students would come and try out,” Murph said. “Bowling is kind of a dying sport, so we just don’t get as many kids out there but I’d love to see more of the students involved. I see a lot of kids [at the lanes], whether they’re college students, high school students or junior high students, bowling on Friday and Saturday nights and I’d love to see more of that from the high school team.”