PHOTOS COURTESY OF JULIE CURTIS

The bowling team at Fife High School is neither a varsity sport nor a sanctioned club, but that didn’t stop them from rolling fourth place at the Washington State Bowling Proprietors Association Varsity Championship. The team bowled an average 866 throughout the year just to get to the season-ending event.

Fife bowlers take fourth

By Ben Miller

The Fife High School boys bowling team does not count as an official sport, according to the school or the state of Washington. In fact, at the present time, it doesn’t even count as a club, but despite labels, one thing is for sure: they know how to bowl.

The five members of the squad bowled their way to a fourth place finish at the Washington State Bowling Proprietors Association (WSBPA) Varsity Championship Feb. 23 and 24. It was just the second season of existence for the team.

“That was pretty fun,” said junior Jesse Schiller about the championships. “I thought we should have done better, but we kind of messed up at the end.”

Schiller joins sophomores Tristan Curtis, Ryan Gallagher and Bryan Switzer, and freshman Jared Baldwin to make up the team. Though the team is in its second year of existence, Curtis and Switzer are the only two original members left this year.

“We want to actually have a more organized club at school,” Curtis said. “That would be good on a college application and for yearbook and stuff like that.”

Curtis and his teammates will find out whether the team will be a sanctioned club by the school March 13, a process that involves having proper transportation and an advisor who is also a faculty member at the school. In the meantime, they are just celebrating the high finish at state and looking forward to next season.

With no faculty advisor, the team was fully run and operated by the students who are on the squad. It was up to them to schedule a place to practice, get into the league they competed in and find transportation to each of the matches.

“We did it on our own basically,” Curtis said.

The team competed in a 14-week league with a match every Friday and bowled together every Monday for practice. Their hard work paid off when they were one of four teams that came out of the 18-team league that they played in to advance to the WSBPA Varsity Championship.

As a team, they bowled an average of 866 in league competitions, a score that placed them third. Their highest team score at one event was a 1044, which placed as the second highest score by any team in their league throughout the season.

When they arrived at the Varsity Championship, the team found out that it as a completely different atmosphere than what they were used to.

“It was really fun,” Schiller said. “There was a bunch of people, screaming and yelling.”

The championships featured 36 teams that were divided into four different divisions based on average score throughout the season. The Fife squad found itself in the second division, with teams that ranged in score from 855 to 902.

On day one, the team found itself on top of the leader board, but on the second day, things started to slide.

“We kept getting open fames,” Curtis said. “We just couldn’t get in your groove. We weren’t really bowling bad, it’s just the other teams were bowling so well.”

In the end, the team finished in fourth place behind Edmonds-Woodway, Bethel and Kentwood.

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