While the Irish bowlers didn’t score a perfect 300 on the season, the team still did have a productive season. With no bowlers averaging over a score of 150 and the loss of a handful of good bowlers from last year’s team, Head Coach Mr. Mark Noe said, “We had expectations to have improvement amongst the players who were participating this year.”

Both the women’s and men’s teams improved much more than what was expected from both Head Coach Mr. Josh Payne and Noe due to the loss of some key bowlers from last year’s team. With expectations to seek improvement from both teams, the bowlers did just that.

Improvements

Three high average men’s bowlers who saw much improvement throughout the season included seniors Jonah Hollis and Nick Toby and junior Brock Steimel. Noe said, “It’s hard to leave people out, but these three are the ones who stood out the most.”

For the women’s team Noe included seniors Kaylyn Brown, Caroline Mages, Bridget Noble and Abby Woida for those who improved the most over the span of the entire season. Noe said, “Again, it was hard to leave people out, but these four bowlers on the girls’ team stood out the most.”

For the first time, both Payne and Noe had enough bowlers to start a junior varsity team. The JV team consisted of 18 bowlers, and there was an entire league for the bowlers.

Noe said, “This was the first year we were able to have a JV team. We did as we expected the bowlers to do. There were many that improved this year and I expect them to come back next year to improve even more.”

Both Noe and Payne coached the varsity and junior varsity teams this past season.

As the team progressed through the season, Noe said that they did improve by a large margin, and he was happy to see the teams get better over the stretch of the season.

Team member and senior Ryan Dubbink said, “This was a very fun season from my perspective. It was enjoyable to see all of the bowlers who I competed with all season improve. The boys’ team did well in my opinion although we did not make it the distance. And I think that next year’s Irish bowlers will be very well prepared for next season.”

Pleased with the season

Although the Irish bowlers had a phenomenal season in perspective of improvements, neither of the teams made it to the final round of competition due to the fact that, “our team had good bowlers but the other school teams such as Carmel were just unbelievable. Although we missed a few pins here and there, we finished about where we thought and were pleased with the season,” as Dubbink said.

Other than the improvements of the bowlers on the varsity teams, JV bowler sophomore John Chandler lead the entire JV league this past season and won the league with total pins knocked down and showed much improvement through the entirety of this year’s season.