The women’s bowling team is opening its season with two highly competitive tournaments. Last weekend, the Vikings competed at the 5 Seasons Classic hosted by Mount Mercy, placing sixth out of 14 teams. In their season opening tournament on Oct. 23, the Vikings placed sixth out of eight, positioning the Vikings into a good starting point for the season since they went up against harder teams.
“Even though we placed sixth [in the season opening tournament], I believe we did really well by looking at our stats compared to last year. We had a lot of improvements in our spares and our overall strike percentages and pinfall,” junior Maddie Lathrop said. “We competed against harder teams, so of course we are going to knock down a little bit as we also went against the national champions.”
Looking ahead in the season, the team hopes to make it further in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) championship tournament.
“Our main, overarching goal for the year is to make it to the conference finals and then to win the conference finals,” Head Coach Marty Resner said. “In the CCIW, the top four teams make it and we have nine teams in the conference. In the last two years, we have missed the top four cut by mere pins.”
The team is currently looking to grow its success by focusing more on the large number of upperclassmen and helping them enhance their skills. Their experience in the sport is important in helping the team be successful as well as growing the culture the team has.
“We have a lot of senior leadership and upperclassmen leadership, [more] than we’ve ever had before,” Resner said. “That’s a big change that’s really helping, because those are the people who are starting to buy into the culture and to the practices that we need to have in order to move forward.”
The team attributes a lot of its success to the team culture and bonds the members establish throughout the season. The connection the team feels with one another is important towards the success of each player, as bowling can be a mentally challenging sport that requires a lot of support.
“We are a lot closer as a team this year,” junior Cami Flores said. “We’re doing a lot more bonding events because bowling is really a mental game. So when you go in and you’re not close with your team, or you’re in a space where you really don’t want to be, it affects your game.”
This year, the team only added one First-Year to the program. Despite the lack of underclassmen, First-Year Cassie Cantos said she feels comfortable with the team because of their focus on culture and connection.
“Even though we have a small team, I feel like we’re all closely knit together and we all know each other even though I’ve only known them for a month,” Cantos said. “It’s a really close team, and I look forward to bowling more with them in the future.”
The success of the bowling team is often overlooked by the fact that people aren’t aware of the sport’s existence or don’t take the competitiveness of the sport seriously.
“I wish that more people learned about the sport before they decide not to respect it,” Lathrop said. “I feel like not a lot of people know about bowling, so they think that we are just playing for fun instead of at a competitive level. It’s completely different.”
Despite the Augie community’s lack of awareness of the sport, the bowling team still feels proud of their sport and hope to have a lot of success this season.
“We love what we do. We come to compete competitively,” Lathrop said. “We want people to respect it as a varsity sport even if they don’t know much about it.”