Edgar/Athens bowling team perseveres

Braden Finck and his Edgar- Athens High School club team bowling teammates were happy they could still compete against opponents this season, even if they were required to take safety precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“It’s nice we could still have our high school bowling season,” said Braden, who is the son of Floyd and Tracey Finck of Edgar.

There were two bowlers from each school on the team that also includes Kaden Goodwin of Edgar and Tristan Paul and Morgan Sommer of Athens. Sommer said her team is competing the best it can against its opponents, like it did against Wittenberg-Birnamwood at Edgar Lanes on Jan. 10, despite it being short one student bowler to score points for the team; the other teams all had five bowlers.

High school bowling teams utilize the Bakers style of bowling, in which each student athlete bowls two frames apiece in each game played.

The Edgar/Athens High School club team’s coaches were Cody Heil and married couple Dylan and Aleena Lepak, all of Edgar.

Dylan Lepak said the Edgar-Athens High School bowling team traveled less this season because of COVID-19. For example, he said the team had more home meets at Edgar Lanes instead of having to travel to bigger bowling venues like Weston Lanes in prior seasons.

He said there were only two high school bowling teams in an alley at one time this winter, instead of several teams all bowling at the same time in a venue like had occurred in the past. For example, on Jan. 10 the Edgar-Athens High School bowling team competed against Wittenberg-Birnamwood at Edgar Lanes. After Wittenberg-Birnamwood’s team left, then Edgar-Athens made up a match against Merrill that was postponed from the previous week.

Aleena Lepak said high school bowlers were required to wear facemarks, and they also needed to keep as much distance as they could from each other and continually use hand sanitizer available at the bowling lanes. On Jan. 10, the Edgar/Athens coaches were seen elbow bumping the bowlers after they bowled a strike, instead of giving them a traditional high five or handshake.

Dale Elliott, who has owned Dale’s Weston Lanes since 1989, implemented a safe method on arranging a high school bowling season schedule to allow schools to still compete against each other.

Elliott is one of the founding members who started high school bowling as a club sport in Wisconsin 16 years ago. He’s served as director of District No. 9, of which the Edgar-Athens High School bowling team is currently a member, for the past 16 years. District No. 9 is separated into two divisions.

“The state high school club bowling tournament, which consists to two divisions, was held the first weekend of March in Green Bay,” Elliott said. “There are always 12 or 14 colleges that come to the state tournament to watch the bowlers to see if they want to offer them a scholarship to bowl for their college teams.”