The bowling team used team bonding and talented young players to push themselves through a strong season.

Under first year head coach Gary Graves, the girls team has placed top three at every meet on the season.

The Lions had multiple underclassmen lead their team in scores, with help from senior leaders. They also used their unique position being a coed sport to grow a strong bond between team members.

“As a team, we all get along with each other and we all push each other and compete against one another which makes our scores go up,” senior Lana Chieu said. “Overall, the season was good.”

Chieu was one of the leaders for the team this season. She originally joined bowling freshman year because of a senior friend at the time.

“Freshman year I made a friend that was a senior and she was like ‘you should come to join bowling.’” Chieu said, “and so then that’s where I am now and it’s one of the best decisions I made.”

The team sent two bowlers to the state championship. Senior Emilie Rodman finished 54th while freshman Maison Albarado wrapped up at 43rd place.

Bowling is one of only a few sports where both boys and girls compete at the same time, which allows for different team dynamics.

“It’s more of a coed sport than other sports,” Chieu said. “A lot of people don’t practice with both boys and girls, and since it’s a smaller team everybody is more involved with each other and we all become friends.”

Sophomore Carson Toews filled an important role between JV and varsity this season.

“Bowling went well this season,” Toews said. “I was kind of the middle dude who jumped JV and varsity.”

Toews was one of many underclassmen on the team this year. The high number of young players gives hope to the team for future seasons as they continue to improve.

“Next year our team will be very competitive,” Toews said, “because there was only one senior on varsity, and we will be gaining a whole freshman class.”

Henry DeWitt contributed to this report.