The bowling team made preparations over the summer to ensure this season will be successful with the 2023 season about to kick off.
The team’s coach, Lenny Raley, believes that this season is about winning, but improving. “Well, we’ve started out, it’s all about trying to improve ourselves one by one. Not so much worried about team scores, even though when we go to a match, we want to have the best team score we can,” Raley said. Though the team’s score is important, it won’t be everything. “I just try to encourage the kids to, in practice and in matches, to try to kind of just keep the same focus. Don’t let the match be more important than practice; practice should be as important as a match,” Raley said.
Raley expects the team’s “veterans” to have practiced and improved over the summer especially. One member of the team, Eric Cox, may be a veteran Raley speaks of. Cox practiced every Sunday, and any chance he got over the summer to improve his skills for the season. The team’s best members, according to Cox and fellow teammate, Jacob Shofner, are Cox, Jacob, and Bryce Herron. Another member, Zach Compton, Cox feels will be the team’s hard hitter. Cox claims he is very consistent, which will be good for the team.
This year’s season is co-ed, considering the girls do not have enough members to have their own team. “We have four [girls], actually, we have five on the roster, which we really need six, but one of those is not been able to attend any of our practices or matches yet, so we’re gonna have to wait and see. So as of right now, we just are co-ed,” Raley said. Another member of the team, Alexis Shofner, aims to have a full female team by the time she graduates. “I’ve been trying to work with the females we have now, just to encourage them so they’ll stay, and then I have tried to talk to other people, and a few of my friends have joined this year. So, I’ve been trying to, we’ll say, recruit more people,” Alexis said.
The next bowling match will occur this Saturday on Nov. 18.
