After finishing their regular season, the Jesuit bowling team headed to regionals looking to move on to the next round at state. Because of the snow and ice the week before, regionals was pushed back to March 1st, the Saturday after Jesuit got off for Spring Break, causing two of the seven members of the team to miss the meet as they were already heading out of town. Fielding a team of five instead of their usual seven, Jesuit bowled one game against each of the eight other teams there, needing a top three finish to qualify for state. Unfortunately, because of their depleted roster, Jesuit’s season ended at regionals as they finished seventh out of the nine teams competing. Mrs. Mattacchione, the head coach of the bowling team, commented that “their performance at regionals did not demonstrate their potential as bowlers” since they were not at their full strength like the other teams there were.
One of the bowlers who could not make the meet was senior captain Michael Case’15, who plays “a big role on the team,” but was out of town while regionals took place. Michael was disappointed he couldn’t compete and thinks that Jesuit would have fared better if the “snow hadn’t pushed regionals back” and if “the whole team could have competed.” However, the second senior captain, Michael Martin’15, did make the meet and bowled for Jesuit. In addition, he previously qualified for regional singles, the only member of the team to do so, and competed as individual against the best bowlers in the region. “I did not bowl as well as I had hoped that day”, said Martin, a top-five district bowler, and he was unable to get a score of 215 to qualify for the next round, a score he usually achieves easily.
Although the Jesuit bowling team did not have the picaresque ending to the season they had dreamed about, they still had a winning 4-3 record in the regular season after losing a majority of their bowlers from the previous year. Looking onto next year, current juniors such as Trey Russell’16 will have to step up and assume leadership roles on the team if they want to continue and build upon their success.
