It may come as a surprise to many students on campus to know that N.C. State has a bowling club. But what may be more surprising is the fact that the team is ranked 13 in the nation, according to Collegebowling.com.
Last weekend the team bowled their way to a third-place finish at the Penn State Classic. Nick Davis placed fourth, and Zack Brown placed tenth out of 228 bowlers.
The club set the season bar high in their season-opening tournament with a first-place finish, winning out over many east coast teams, including Virginia Tech, Georgetown and Penn State. The following tournament ended in similar fashion, with State rounding out the weekend in second place. A 13-place finish in the Brunswick Southern Collegiate Classic pushed the team back in rankings, but last weekend’s performance earned some redemption.
Brown, a junior in civil engineering and club president, is in his third year of competition with the team. He said that the team has been much better than the previous two teams, made evident by their first-place finish, as well as narrowly being pushed out of first place in the following tournament.
“Every tournament we go to, we have a good chance to win,” Brown said.
Brown also attributes the club’s success to their relentless practice of spares, which can make or break a team’s final score.
“As crazy as it might sound, spares win tournaments,” Brown said. “In these tournaments, strikes are hard to come by, just from how hard the oil pattern can be. When a team is making most of its spares, scores will reflect the hard work that the team puts on practice. This year, we are certainly one of the teams that show we can make spares as well as strikes.”
The team is led by head coach Irywn Atkinson, who owns the pro shop at Buffaloe Lanes North. He coaches the team in practices on Tuesday and Thursday nights, along with Eric Moore and Bryan Collier.
Mike Flitcraft, a sophomore in electrical engineering and second year bowler, said that coaching is another key factor in the team’s success thus far into the season.
“[Atkinson] is a great guy, a very good coach, a nice person and just a fun guy to be around,” Flitcraft said. “All of these guys help us on perfecting our game and making us better bowlers.”
Brown and Flitcraft both noted Davis as the team’s “fearless leader” – the unofficial captain who is considered the best bowler on the team by many of his teammates. This year is Nick’s final year with the bowling club, and his fellow bowlers want it to be his best.
“He means so much to the team that all of the guys are working extremely hard so that his last year of collegiate bowling can be one to remember,” Brown said.
The team is currently a student organization but is requesting affiliation as a club sport. Brown said that it would be very beneficial to become an official club sport primarily for publicity and recruiting.
“We would have to do some sort of recruiting. Getting bowlers, men and women, from anywhere we could get them,” Brown said.
Flitcraft paralleled the teams’ need for more participants, as well as more notoriety.
“I hope the team will get more publicity on campus and get us more supporters,” Flircraft said. “Not too many people know about us, and having more people support us would be great.”
The team is also seeking more sponsorships as bowling can quickly become an expensive sport. Each player has four or five bowling balls, tallying in at about 200 dollars each in addition to tournament travel. The bowlers travel anywhere from four to ten hours to compete in tournaments, and most of the expenses come out of pocket.
Although the team is neither a varsity or club sport, the bowlers have found some gratification in their success while representing N.C. State.
“State has been going through a rough patch in popular sports as of late, but when we go to these tournaments, people know that we are a team to be careful of,” Flitcraft said. “We have been bowling great all year and had two bowlers that made it through to nationals last year.”
“[The success] is nice though, it’s just a shame that we really don’t get the credit that we deserve,” Brown said. “Nobody really knows the bowling team even exists.”