The bowling team starts to see improvement from hard work during practice as its Varsity boys takes third, and its Varsity girls takes another second place finish on Monday at Little Apple Lanes. Varsity boys scored 1,980, falling behind Washburn Rural, who scored 2,504, and Emporia who scored 2,217. Varsity girls scored 2170, falling 147 points behind Washburn Rural, who scored 2,317.

“I feel pretty good about [the placement], with the boys taking third, that’s about where they are right now, there a second or third place team,” head coach Robert Regan said. “The girls bowled well, they did the same as the boys and I saw a lot of things that we have been working on in practice that they improved on and they really executed during the game.”

The girls have had four second place finishes this season. The team’s scoring average was 488 during this game, with five out of six players scoring in the 300-400 range. One player specifically stood out: junior Alex Newell, who scored 620, was the highest- scoring player on the team, ranking second out of all the Varsity girls at the meet.

“Yeah I thought we did ok. I wish we could do better with picking up spares,” Newell said. “Spares are the biggest priority. I think we can work more on finishing our shots and getting the sevens and 10s.”

The team is starting to see improvement on specific things that they have been working on in practice including spares, which was something that played a big role in the team’s last few meets. They also worked on staying under the ball and overall control of the ball which was something that helped Newell get her season high of 620.

“My ball wasn’t reacting as it had been, I had to adjust to the lanes, and I had to adjust my stance,” junior Nathaniel Chaput said. “I need to work on adjusting to heavy oil because in Junction City there’s going to be a lot of oil on the lanes, and I need to be able to handle that, but I don’t think it will affect the team that much because we played them before under the same conditions.”

Chaput was the highest-scoring player for the Varsity boys, ranking him eighth out of all the Varsity boys at the meet. The team will face Junction City this Thursday.