Augustana College is discussing the possibility adding a women’s bowling team to the official team sports.
While it hasn’t been made official yet, Athletic Director Mike Zapolski confirmed that Augustana is considering a women’s team.
“We’ll be announcing the two sports soon and posting job announcements,” Zapolski said.
Zapolski said the reason Augustana is adding a team is because of the sport’s potential with recruitment.
“The big push for the sport is from an enrollment standpoint,” Zapolski said.
Zapolski also said that Augustana adding the bowling team is a lot like what the process was for adding the lacrosse team only a few years ago, where the sport is very popular among colleges and wanted to add that to their official sports.
While the bowling team is being formed, the budget for the program is being added to the school’s budget.
For now, the team, as Zapolski said, will have a “partial operational budget” for the first year or two of the sports’ inception. What this partial operational budget is comprised of is buying equipment, coaches’ salaries, buying uniforms and other things to have a prepared team.
Once Augustana finds and hires a desirable coach, the recruitment process will begin. The process to find a new coach, according to Zapolski, should begin this spring
Zapolski said the bowling team should be able to compete once the team gets past the first year of purchasing supplies and recruiting potential athletes.
“We will have 2016-2017 be a recruiting year and have the 2017-2018 year to compete,” Zapolski said.
Many of the women’s bowling team’s opponents will be NAIA schools such as St. Ambrose along with a few others.
One challenge facing the addition of the bowling team is conference play.
Zapolski believes more schools will add bowling to their roster of sports as the sport becomes more popular.
“Right now we have no conference play,” Zapolski said. “But as more schools (are) adding it, there could be (potential conference games).”
When the women’s bowling team is added to Augustana’s sports roster, the Augustana sports information website will be due for a change to represent bowling.
While Dave Wrath, Associate Director of Athletics and head of the sports information office at Augustana, said  he wouldn’t comment on the addition of the team until the official word is out, he said the sports information office “will have a plan in place to make sure that any additional sport(s) is/are fully represented on any of the Augustana athletic media sources.”
CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this article, it was cited that both a men’s and women’s bowling team would be added. It is only a women’s team that is being considered.