As of Feb. 3, the Niles North 2023 – 2024 competitive bowling season is officially over with the end of the Girls Bowling Regional tournament. Despite the Girls Varsity team consisting of all new players and only amassing a single match victory, the girls continue to enjoy the sport, make new friends from bowling, and encourage other girls to join the sport. The 2024 season appears to be the biggest at NN in years, for both boys and girls, reaching numbers of players not seen since before the pandemic. While the Vikings may not have the best bowling teams, things may change for where NN will stand against the Central Suburban League and beyond.
In last year’s season, the Girls Bowling team only had only four players, not enough to make a full varsity team; the girls could not participate in competitions as a team. For the boys, there were just enough players to make a Varsity team of six players, granting them eligibility for competitions. This year, numbers kept growing for both teams. While there were no returning bowlers on the Girls Bowling team this year, the team amassed nine rookies total who became Varsity players, regranting eligibility in team competitions. Not only that but the boys’ numbers grew dramatically as well. The Varsity team went from six to eight players even after the departure of two seniors, and over a dozen players came to try out for the team with over half of them staying for (at least relatively) the entire season. This made the Viking boys a stronger force in matches and tournaments, showing itself evident with their two match wins against Deerfield and their close victory against Niles West in a home match on Dec. 19.
“As soon as people start to take the game seriously, they actually do better,” Varsity bowler Jacob Titsworth said. “You can actually do pretty good. My opinion before was that the sport was just for fun, and it’s still for fun but it’s also a competition; I like that it’s a fun, competitive thing. The progress was definitely a lot better. Our JVs were getting big numbers, Varsity guys were hitting 200s, 220s, and then up to James with his new PR (278). There were a lot of PRs this year.”
While the Boys Bowling season ended with Varsity player James Prizant’s advancement to Sectionals, Girls Bowling ended with Regionals in a lackluster yet entertaining away tournament. Although the Viking girls did place last, their placement throughout the tournament did not seem to faze them; the girls chose to focus on Regionals as a social positive rather than a fierce competition. More than anything, the girls, as well as the boys, were overall proud of the progress they made throughout the season and were happy with where it led them, even if it ended at Regionals.
“We could have done better at the tournament, but in terms of improvement since day one and our first match against Vernon Hills, we did a lot better,” Girls Varsity bowler and Senior Grace Michaels said. “Everyone managed to get above their average when they first joined bowling. For everyone, Regionals was very fun, and even when [one of us each] sat out we still cheered everyone that was playing. Sometimes we interacted with people of the opposite teams, because even though everyone’s competing it’s not going to hurt anyone to say hi to someone else; it was very fun. There were a lot of people, mainly families. If you were to try to walk through the crowd of people to watch the game it was like going through a maze. With how loud some people were, you’d think this was anything else but a bowling game.”
Of the teams there, we unfortunately finished last; having a team of nine bowlers that are all first year bowlers with no experience, the expectation level wasn’t very high. [But] we improved through the season. As far as pin count, we finished higher than what I anticipated. From the beginning, obviously [the players] have a nervousness, there’s a lack of confidence in what they’re doing, and as the season went on their confidence got better just because their skill level improved. I’m hoping this year, because we have more girls involved, we can get more word out next year. I’m hoping we can generate more interest among the incoming freshmen. I think if our girls (except seniors) come back, we will have a good foundation which will help improve our scoring average next season.” — Richard Lee, Girls Bowling Coach
Bowling was not always so unpopular at NN; before the pandemic, when bowling was getting its start as a team sport, it seemed to start off strong and only grow from there. Introduced to D219 in 2013, it started off as a co-op team with NW, then a coed sport at NN, and finally gender split sport in the 2017 – 2018 season. During this time there were dozens of tryouts and many victories; even in the walls of NN’s main gym, one can see that NN were declared the CSL Conference Champions in 2016. North Star News’ own Juliana Peña even said in her own 2019 story, “This year’s team has 20 members and it has been growing since it first started.” Now, the sport has become rather unpopular and requires constant dedication from its teammates to bring up its number of participants. Despite this, efforts have been made and appear to be successful. Bowling shows up on posters around the school and has even received coverage from school media outlets such as North Star Broadcast. Not only that but Instagram accounts have been made to popularize the sports with students. @nnboysbowling and @nngirlsbowling were made in September and January respectively with the former amassing nearly 200 followers over 58 reels. Currently the most popular post from the two is @nnboysbowling’s “Impossible Physics” post which, as of Feb. 8, 2024, has gained over 9500 likes since its initial posting on Nov. 15.
“All of us improved a lot with our form,” Varsity bowler and Freshman Amira Cheng said. “Before, none of us really knew how bowling worked, but as time went by we were taught. The positives include building relationships with your teammates and getting to know other people, honestly. During our games we also get time to talk to the other players from other schools. Bowling taught me how to actually plan my schedule [as well]. I come home late so I need to plan out the stuff I need to do. For me, bowling’s all about… bowling of course but then building relationships with people, getting to know them, and getting them involved because it’s a very fun sport. It’s underrated.”
Bowling, regardless of gender, while extremely unpopular in the past few years, has gained one of its most productive and publicized seasons this year. Even today, the issue remains that many don’t recognize bowling as a sport and are completely unaware of the sport’s competitive side. While our bowlers do their job in keeping the sport popular it will be the work of NN students and staff to keep on promoting and talking about the niche sport of ten-pin bowling, which is so prominent in Chicago. The future of bowling and its teams at NN appear to hold great promise in seasons to come.
