DominikaKouassi

In its fifth year, the bowling team has won districts for the first time and qualified for the NSAA State Bowling Championship as a team on Feb. 7 at Sun Valley lanes. 

The 2024-2025 Marian bowling team is composed of seniors Sami McCormack, Gabby Birkel, Jenna Blach, Ellie Brabec and Margaret Hiatt, sophomores Maggie Arbataitis, Madison Schnell, Maelee Smith and freshmen Maeve McGill, Jillian McKee, Kate Lamee and Alexa DeGeorge.

The following bowlers placed within the top ten. Blach in tenth place, Smith, who had the hihgest score of the season, in 8th place, McCormack in 7th place, Hiatt in 6th, and Birkel in 2nd. Birkel also self qualified for state so she will be competing individually and with the team.

The team is head coached by social studies teacher Mr. Chris Dziadus, volunteer assistant coached by Mr. Ted Baer and student managed by sophomore Dorothy Smith. 

“I’m pretty excited,” said Dziadus. “We had hoped to get better as the season went along and that’s exactly what we did.”

McCormack has been part of the Marian bowling team since her junior year and if there is any way to frame her bowling journey, it would be defined by a quest for friendship and new connections that turned into a rewarding sport and pastime. 

Her start in bowling began when she went bowling with her cousins during her holiday breaks. She started noticing her natural skill at bowling then. “I think it definitely helped me, even when I didn’t do it consistently,” McCormack said. What really pushed McCormack to pursue her bowling career seriously, though, was the familiar community. “I just really liked hanging out with some of the girls on the team, and I had a good relationship with the coach and thought it would be super fun to try something new,” McCormack said. Though nervous, the integration into the world of bowling was fairly easy. “The very first bowling meet that we had I was on JV and got moved up to Varsity on the next one and have been there ever since,” McCormack said. Since then, she has been on the Varsity bowling team, and in her junior year, she and advanced to the state championships after finishing among the top five bowlers in the district competition.

However, like most sports, school does sometimes pose a conflict in competition schedules. “The only thing that can get hard is every time that we meet we have to leave the last block of the day [for tournaments],” McCormack said. With the help of her classmates, McCormack feels supported by her friends to catch her up on the work she missed.

Marian bowling fans can support the team at State at Lincoln’s Sun Valley Lanes at 7 p.m. on Feb. 12 and the individual contest happens on Feb. 13. Tickets are available starting Feb. 7 through the NSAA website at nsaahome.org.