Sport: Bowling - State Championships Results

Our Year 11 Boys are the 2nd best Ten Pin Bowling team in Victoria, after clinching the Runners-Up trophy (our Year 9 Boys also got 5th place) at the 1st ever State Championships on Friday 6th December, at the WynCity Keon Park Bowling complex in Thomastown.

In a field of 11 teams from places such as Elwood, Frankston, Wyndham, Manor Lakes, Warragul, Traralgon and the Mornington Peninsula, the boys (Tom Ford, Wirra Gilson, Jye Laxton and Jack Lockhart) amassed 1,022 points across 2 games (72 more than their Hume Region score), finishing 62 ahead of 3rd place Warragul Regional College, but falling 69 short of the 1,099  scored by SEDa College (Traralgon campus) in the adjacent lane.

The lads were in the mix all day, and at the half way point with 1 game completed, they sat just 4 points off  the lead. SEDa  College led on 532, incredibly just one point ahead of Warragul Regional College (531), with  us on 528.

At this stage Jye Laxton (156) was the 2nd top scorer of the 44 bowlers in the comp, while James Chisholm (143), who crushed a strike with his very 1st bowl of the day and then carried on, had the 3rd top score. His Year 9 team sat in 4th on 445 points.

Laxton had been the prime bowler for most of that 1st game, until one of the SEDa players got her eye in and overtook him with a Double Strike in her last play of the game. His teammates were all solid too - Ford (128), Lockhart (127) and Gilson (117) all comfortably breaking the 100.

With a thrilling finish still likely for most of the 2nd, things changed in the final few plays. Warragul RC faltered, going for just 429 - 102 fewer than their 1st game. Their total of 960 gave them 3rd place.

Our Year 9 team remained consistent, following up their 445 with 444, for a total of 889 to finish in 5th overall. The dominant Chisholm couldn’t match his Game 1 heroics, scoring 48 less for a score of 95. However Fischer (124) and Walters (130) lifted, improving by 16 and 27 respectively.

Our Year 11s, with the State Title in their grasp and the pressure on, saw improvement from Ford (144 up from 128) and Lockhart (137 up from 127). However Laxton found his pins somehow not dropping as they had prior - scoring 113 in Game 2 compared to his 156 in Game 1.  With all 4 of them breaking the 100 again, they amassed a respectable 494, but that was 34 shy of their Game 1 tally of 528.

In contrast, there was SEDa College in the lane beside. All of a sudden, their Golgen Girl, Zoe, who we found out had grown up at a Bowling Alley (her mum managed one for years, and was actually running this event) and had been bowling since she was  10 years old, started getting a flurry of strikes. Her spinning technique, with her bowl curling viciously into the middle pin at the last minute like a Heatseaker, was something to behold, and everyone in the venue was drawn to watch her display. She scored 222 in Game 2 alone, and carried her team to a score of 559 (an improvement of 37 on their 532 of Game 1) and the Title.

Our boys were thrilled to have draped over their necks a Silver Medal each by officials from both School Sport Victoria and Ten Pin Bowling Australia, as well as a trophy for the school.

It must be said, that without that wonderfully talented girl from SEDa, our boys would have been State Champions, and our 1st in any tram sport since 2005, 19 years ago (when we had 5 teams win State - 7 Boys Football, 7 Girls Squash, 7 Boys Squash, Intermediate Boys Baseball, and Senior Girls Squash).

They can proudly boast though, of being just our 2nd team to achieve State Runner-Up in 10 years. The last was our 16 Girls Cross Country team in 2019 (Tessa Clayton, Ulrika Wild, Sophe Bray and Sienna Fuller), and prior, our 2014 Senior Girls Netball team,  led by the likes of dual A Grade O&M Premiership players for Wangaratta Magpies, Chaye Crimmins and Hannah Grady. In anyone’s language, that is some achievement.

Thanks boys for a great effort. A 7am departure, a forced detour through the backroads of Epping on the way home with the Hume Highway blocked off due to a fire, great sportsmanship all day, and the only school in Victoria to have two teams in the Top 5.

Jud Mullins

Sport Co-ordinator