Down nine pins, the members of the boys varsity bowling team knew they had to come through in the clutch in the final game of the match in order to defeat New Trier and keep their seven match win streak alive.
“Bowling is like boxing in some ways,” said Head Coach Todd Rubin. “One guy throws a punch, and the other team has their chance to answer. And it was punch for punch, frame by frame. We were trying to look up the score. We were up five, down 10, up five, down 10. Going into the last frame, we were about even with them. Even in that game that wouldn’t have been good enough. We needed to beat them by nine pins in that last game. It came up to the last ball.”
After New Trier’s final bowler failed to knock down all 10 pins, anchor bowler Corey Kahen rolled a strike in front of the home crowd. The strike sealed the team’s three pin victory in its closest match of the year, keeping the win streak alive.
The bowling team started off its second season as an IHSA qualifier with a 10 match win streak, sparking aspirations of making the state finals.
“It was exciting,” said senior Jacob Townsend. “We were 1-0, and then 2-0, 3-0, 4-0 and so on. We started to get on this win streak that put us in a mental state that we are a competitive team. Bowling in tournaments with bigger teams that are in our sectional, we were coming in the top two or three pretty much all the time. When we were placing higher than all these teams it showed that we could go to state.
For Kahen, the win against Notre Dame High School early in the season showed him just how far the team could go this season.
“We shot over 3,000 [against Notre Dame],” said Kahen. “So that’s everybody averaging over 200. It wasn’t that it was a big match. It was just how well we bowled during it. It showed our potential. That was the match that changed my view of us being just a pretty good team to one that could actually make it to state this year.”
The Spartans’ win streak ended against a team that practices just a few lanes away from them: Deerfield High School. Although GBN faced a 211 pin deficit heading into the last game of the match, the team rallied back to outscore Deerfield 1,146-941, which included senior Tim Schultz’s 11 consecutive strikes.
“We literally couldn’t bowl much better,” said Rubin. “Unfortunately we only won by 205 pins in that last game, which is a huge margin of victory in a game, but it was six pins short of what needed to happen.”
Despite the end of the win streak, Townsend, one of the team’s founding members, continued to hope that the team make it into the state finals in his last season.
“The team is going to take a huge hit next year, losing four varsity starters,” said Townsend. “So I want to be able to say that we were the team that went to state. I want to be known as the best team that bowled here because this is the core group of guys that started the program.”
The team went on to finish the regular season with a 12-3 record before the Vernon Hills sectional on Jan. 19. The Spartans needed to finish in the top two scores in order to qualify for the state finals.
After the first three games, the team found itself in second place, down 49 pins to leader Lake Zurich High School. In the final three games, the bowlers were able to take the lead and ultimately win the tournament, capturing the first state berth and sectional title in the program’s existence. The Spartans bowled a total of 6,026 pins, 69 more than second place Vernon Hills High School.
Even though the team accomplished the goal set in the early part of the season, Townsend is still not satisfied heading into the state finals on Jan. 25 at St. Clair Bowl in O’Fallon, Ill.
“I don’t want to be known as the team that just went to state and died down,” said Townsend. “I want to push forward. I want more. I want to be remembered as the team that finished in the top three, which is something we can do. We just need to put things together and take it one game at a time.”