With the bowling season underway, head coach Amber Emanuel is excited, especially with so many new faces after 6 seniors last year. The team has a lot to look forward to, both in this season as well as in the years to come.
Jay Journal:
What do you think the key factors in the team success last year were placing first in districts and seventh at state?
Emanuel:
I think it really came down to the team’s buy-in. They were very motivated by the previous year’s seniors, and they wanted to take things to the next level. …In their free time, they were going bowling, they were looking up different techniques and approaches. And so I think that really played in is that we had so much buy in, and we had so much individual effort, but also working together in order to achieve that goal, like everyone wanting this, wanting to be better and wanting to break records and make their own name for themselves and not just ride on, you know, the successes and the improvements of previous
Jay Journal:
How do you prepare the team mentally and physically for the high pressure moments and tournaments.
Emanuel:
The biggest thing is just experience, and it’s really just getting kids exposed to that pressure, because honestly, there’s no better way to get them used to that moment. So for me, it’s having kids go up against those high pressure moments… and when we come against those really high pressure moments, is giving them the space and the confidence to know that they can figure out a way to overcome it, things like the lanes changing, or bowling balls not hitting the pockets, so they’re not getting the strikes and the spares, or the pinfall that they’re expecting. My role at that point is just to say, “You know what to do, take a deep breath” and get them to feel comfortable.
Jay Journal:
How do you balance individual player improvement with the overall team performance?
Emanuel:
I think for me, it’s giving kids a chance to … work through when they’re struggling with bowling. [We] do have subs and so we can sub in and out bowlers. The teams that we play, I think are very good at modeling – letting kids work through those challenges, as opposed to if someone’s not doing well, immediately pulling them out and switching them in with someone else. So I think that even though bowling is a very individual sport, getting kids feeling confident they can turn things around, but also really relying on the team themselves to know what their teammate needs at that time. Do they need to be hyped up? Do they need a reality check? Do they need advice, or do they need just a ‘hey, you can turn it around the next time’. …You want everyone individually to do well, but [it’s very rare that] one person is the make or break in a situation.
Jay Journal:
How do you create a sense of teamwork and camaraderie in a sport that’s very individual?
Emanuel:
I’ve been very lucky in that I have had, especially these past couple years, students who are very willing to kind of step into that role of being leaders and being good teammates and offering advice. We have a very mixed team dynamic in terms of kids who’ve had experience bowling before … so they picked up things before joining the team themselves. And so I think having those individuals who have had that experience, …they see someone struggling, they’ll kind of talk through things with them be like, oh, did you try this? Have you thought about moving [in your approach]? Or when someone is bowling, they turn around, and then they ask, like, Oh, what do you see what happened there? …We’ve just been very lucky in that we have guys who are very kind…The team building happens over the course of the season, that happens more and more where you have that inner coaching, inner hyping up happening too. …And so I think as much as bowling is an individual sport, there’s still a huge team aspect on wanting your team to do well, that there’s like, cheering and there’s hooping and hollering, and if someone’s having a really great game, you know you’ve got, like, everyone is invested in wanting this person to do the best
Jay Journal:
Last year, what were your biggest challenges that the team faced, and how did you overcome them? And on that, how can you translate that into this year?
Emanuel:
I think the biggest challenges were that even though we had very talented bowlers, they were still very new in terms of not necessarily having the depth of knowledge to automatically be able to make changes. And then we were still getting used to tournament experiences and still getting used to that pacing. And so I think that was the biggest thing, learning and developing that competence in that area was probably our biggest challenge. It just kind of comes down to the more [competitive] exposure we do, that the more we talk through things that are happening, and the more that we don’t always measure our successes by, did we beat the other team, But we measure our successes by how well we did? Did we hit our mark? Did we pick up our spares? Did we hit our strikes? Did we hype each other up? Did we give each other space? I think … developing the buy-in and the support for each other was what helped us get to where we ended.
Jay Journal:
What are your goals for the season for the team, or maybe for some individuals?
Emanuel
I know these guys would love to repeat as district champs. And while we need to build that cohesion like we built last year, we’ve got a lot of new guys. We graduated six of our seven varsity bowlers, and so that’s a big shift. And so I think our goal is to get back to that level of cohesion, to be able to not necessarily break records, but having strong games, being consistent, doing well at conference and district like we did last year, I think are definitely team goals at a minimum. And also just seeing from the JV level to the varsity level, improvement in not only confidence and bowling, but scores and consistency and all those sorts of things. Individually, I know Jaden [Kane] would love to make his second consecutive appearance at State. I know Blaise [Bauer] and Theo [Goutierre] and those guys are also kind of vying for having strong individual seasons as well. And I think they’re very capable of doing that. So for me, I’d love to see, I think Jaden currently holds the individual record for high game. It’s a 273, he and Carter Thomas [Class of ‘23] might still be kind of tied up there. I’m sure that we’ve got a couple people kind of vying for that as well.