As bowling balls roll down the lane and teams cheer, 4 -1A bowling regionals take place at Holiday Bowl. Lots of preparation went into hosting regionals at home.
One consideration for hosting regionals was the size of the bowling alley and the amount of people on each team as well as the spectators. Boy teams played first and arrived at Holiday Bowl while the girls teams arrived at Sugar Shane’s Café and waited for their time in the afternoon.
KSHSAA asked Augusta to host regionals, after another team dropped out and could not host.
“KSHSAA called and asked if we’d be willing to, and after talking with our bowling alley coaches, we felt like we could host it,” athletic director Josh Ybarra said.
KSHSAA had to choose the next qualified coach and working bowling alley.
“They look at all of the sites, the bowling centers that are hosting state tournaments are taken out. You can’t host regionals if you’re hosting state,” head coach Abby Emmitt said. “There’s only two bowling centers in our region after that, which are Derby Bowl and Holiday Bowl.”
The Mulvane Wildcats home alley is Derby Bowl and the Augusta Orioles bowl at Holiday Bowl. Mulvane’s coach is a first-year coach and Emmitt is a second-year coach. Since Emmitt was the most experienced coach of the two, KSHSAA chose Holiday Bowl to host regionals.
Throughout the year many lanes have been down at practice, but Emmitt found a solution if one broke down.
“I’m creating multiple different line assignments to work out in case something goes down. The bowling center also is going to have two mechanics on hold or on the job at the time so that way we have enough to get things rolling,” Emmitt said.
One mechanic stayed in the back behind the lanes and the other one remained up front for anything that happened at that end.
“If something does happen, we can easily split bowlers to different lines and just add them to the game,” Emmitt said.
A day at regionals includes boys bowling in the morning with three games a piece, then four Baker games (Baker games is the team aspect of bowling; everyone bowls certain frames), awards and then the same with the girls in the afternoon. The top two teams and the top six players that are not on those teams go to state. Bowling state will take place at Wichita Bowlero formerly known as The Alley.
Sophomore John Kant was excited about having regionals at home.
“I feel pretty happy I don’t want to travel too far for regionals. They’ll be right in town, so it’s easy to get there and it will be fun,” Kant said.
Freshman Sidney Short was confident that the wooden lanes were an advantage for the team.
“If the other team has bowled on wood lanes as well, we will not have our home advantage,” Short said.
