In Newest Bowling Role, Myers has EGR Boys Rolling
By
Dean Holzwarth
Special for MHSAA.com
March 12, 2021
EAST GRAND RAPIDS – Hunter Myers is performing a rare double role in athletics this winter.
The Vicksburg High School graduate is the first-year varsity bowling coach at East Grand Rapids, while also competing as a collegiate bowler.
The 21-year-old Myers is a junior on the Aquinas College men’s bowling team.
His opportunity to take the reins of the program occurred while interning for Pioneers’ athletic director Tim Johnston.
“He lost his bowling coach, and he brought me in and asked if I would take it,” Myers said. “I thought that would be a great idea, and I thought I could help out a lot and try to make things a little better.”
Myers inherited a boys squad that had struggled in recent years. East Grand Rapids won only one match in 2019 and was 6-14 last season.
This season was put on hold by the pandemic as high school sports were shut down in early November. But bowling was one of the first sports to return in January, and it’s currently been a season to remember as the Pioneers are experiencing a turnaround that few expected.
“Things weren’t going very good for them, so I was looking forward to helping them in any way I could,” Myers said. “It’s been an amazing experience, and I can’t complain one bit. I’m doing it for the kids, because when everything got shut down I didn’t even know if I would have a team.
“We had a girls team of seven and 18 guys came out so I was able to pick six and we’ve run with it ever since. I love the kids, and everything has been going well.”
The boys team is currently 9-5-1 on the season after a loss to conference leader Byron Center on Wednesday.
That setback hasn’t diminished the vast improvement made by the Pioneers’ starters. Each bowler has made giant strides and improved his averages by 30-50 pins.
“I just got blessed with a good team with kids who are competitive and had some basics down,” Myers said. “They just needed some fine tuning, and now their averages have increased by a lot.”
East Grand Rapids has been led by junior Corbin Olsson, who boasts a 201 average.
Olsson averaged around 170 last season, but has seen his pin total rise through hard work and the addition of an experienced fresh face at the helm.
“I thought it was going to be good to have someone like him coach us because he has experience bowling in tournaments and bowling in high school and college, so he knows what it’s like,” Olsson said. “Last year was a pretty rough season, but with the new coaches and some new kids on the team it has definitely helped.
“Coach has helped us with positioning, as far as where to stand and aim the ball. He also helps us to stay positive and have a good mental attitude toward the game.”
Junior Finn Moher is averaging 189, while the other juniors include Gavin Bishop (173), Cameron Brandstadt (176) and Michael Columbo (167).
Beau Stancil (151) is the lone senior.
Myers said he is pleasantly surprised by the team’s success.
“I didn’t know we would be doing as well as we have,” he said. “Now we’re third in the conference and we’re looking pretty good for Regionals coming up.”
While Myers has provided fresh insight to his team, he said his bowlers have dedicated themselves to getting better.
“They are putting in a lot of time on the lanes this year because they see what they can do, and they go out on their own and bowl together on the weekends,” he said. “We have two practices a week where they all work hard for an hour and a half, and we work on picking up spares and figuring out oil patterns as to what their ball is doing.”
Moher said Myers is showing the team different aspects of bowling that they didn’t know prior to his arrival.
“Just learning how to adjust to different lane conditions and how to move when our shot is not working,” he said. “He’s given us some confidence in ourselves and we’re starting to win, which has helped a lot.
“Our first Bakers game is usually pretty good, but then the second one we don’t do as well. Individually we do really well, and I’m already looking forward to next year because I think we’re going to be really good with basically everyone coming back.”
Myers visited his former school for EGR’s first match, competing against his father James, who is the coach at Vicksburg.
Hunter won family bragging rights as the Pioneers rolled to a 26-4 win.
“My dad coached me in high school, and I called him and set up a match down there,” Myers said. “That was the first big surprise of the season, and that was a sweet victory for me.”
Myers said the parental support has been satisfying during the course of the season as East Grand Rapids has overcome past struggles en route to respectability.
“They think I’m some kind of wizard who made their bowlers really good, but they had it in them the whole time,” Myers said. “It’s just that nobody has really tapped into it.”
The Pioneers will compete next weekend at Regionals in Comstock Park.
“I think we have a shot at doing pretty well, and we’re definitely going to do a lot better than last year,” Olsson said. “It feels good to be on a winning team instead of one that loses all the time, and we all get along as a team. It’s been fun.”
Dean Holzwarth has covered primarily high school sports for Grand Rapids-based WOOD-TV for four years after serving at the Grand Rapids Press and MLive for 16 years along with shorter stints at the Ionia Sentinel and WZZM. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Allegan, Kent and Ottawa counties.
PHOTO: Hunter Myers, far left, is in his first season leading the East Grand Rapids boys bowling program. (Photo courtesy of the EGR bowling program.)
Friday Standouts, Saturday Champs in D3
March 1, 2014
By Chip Mundy
Special to Second Half
JACKSON – Fremont junior Sam Brandt’s opponent in the MHSAA singles bowling championship match Saturday seemingly had a hometown advantage.
However, despite living 150 miles away, Brandt feels right at home and has had plenty of success at Airport Lanes in Jackson, and he became just the third male to win an MHSAA team championship and a singles championship in the same season in bowling. The other two were Peter Duran of Sandusky (Class C-D in 2005) and Trevor Jackson of Hudsonville Unity Christian (Class B in 2004).
On Friday, Brandt led Fremont to the MHSAA team championship with a 268 in the final game, and Saturday he qualified ninth and swept four two-game matches to win the singles title. He defeated Zach UIicny of nearby Jackson Lumen Christi 414-332 in the championship match.
Last November, Brandt won a Youth Masters championship at Airport Lanes on nearly the identical pair of lanes, and last year he finished third in the MHSAA Finals singles event also at Airport Lanes.
“The shot was almost similar to Friday, but every pair was different,” said Brandt, whose brother Zach Brandt won the Division 3 singles championship in 2011 and was runner-up in 2010. “Everybody throws different, so it shifts different ways, and you play different lines. But nobody was playing the outside, so I kind of took that as an advantage.”
Brandt averaged 200.5 pins in six qualifying games to earn the ninth seed in match play. He averaged 199.2 in the next three two-game matches, setting up the championship clash with Ulicny, who had averaged 204.2 during the same stretch.
However, Ulicny had trouble striking on lanes 35-36, and Brandt took an early lead. Ulicny grabbed his only lead in the 10th frame of the first game when he struck three times – his first strikes of the championship match – to take a two-pin edge. However, Brandt, who was working on a strike in the ninth, also struck out in the 10th to take a 203-185 edge after one game.
“I just made sure that I had my line,” Brandt said of the key 10th frame. “I had to execute it, and I knew what I had to do.”
Ulicny started the second game with three consecutive open frames while Brandt had a double and a spare to build a huge lead. Brandt poured it on with three strikes in a row late for a 211-147 edge.
Brandt, a right-hander with a high backswing, is patient on the lanes and takes considerable time before starting his approach.
“I’m just trying to clear my head and focus on my mark,” he said. “I know what I have to do; I just have to focus.
“I just run through the steps in my head and just relax – you have all the time in the world until you throw your shot.”
Heather Bruci of Richmond came close to duplicating Brandt’s double-championship weekend in the girls singles. Although she won that event, her Richmond team lost on Friday in the Semifinals after outdistancing the field in qualifying by more than 300 pins to earn the No. 1 seed.
“This doesn’t make up for it – yea, it’s awesome to be a state champion, but it would have been even greater to be the team state champion,” said Bruci, a senior. “We really worked hard at what we do, and it was really close. I honestly think we could have won it, but we just got lazy.”
Bruci averaged 199.5 pins in the six-game qualifying session and was seeded No. 2 for match play. After an 89-pin victory in the round of 16, Bruci had to face teammate and good friend Noelle Scheuer in the Quarterfinals. Bruci had games of 202 and 243 to sideline Scheuer 445-382.
“Bowling my teammate was hard because I’ve bowled with Noelle since I was 3 years old,” Bruci said. “We’ve always worked up to this; it’s always been me and her. We always said we were going to bowl each other in the state championship, and it happened.
“I knew I wanted it that bad, so I went out and got it.”
That set up a Semifinal match against Victoria Bender of Croswell-Lexington, which defeated Richmond in the Team Semifinals on Friday and went on to win the team championship. Bruci won with a two-game total of 334-313, but a split in the ninth frame of the second game made it interesting.
“I was just thinking to save myself, and I have a chance to win it,” she said.
Richmond and Croswell-Lexington are members of the Blue Water Area Conference, and the girls on the bowling teams know each other well.
“I have a lot of respect for them; they’re great friends of mine, and they’re always nice to me and say congratulations and cheer me on, and I cheer them on, too,” Bruci said of Croswell-Lexington. “Victoria and I are really good friends, but when it comes to competition, there are no friends. You have to do what you have to do, and you can get together after.”
In the championship match, Bruci had a strike or nine-count on 19 of her first 20 first-ball deliveries before leaving a split in the final frame of the second game.
“My coach told me I had already won, so I wanted to go out like a champion should go out,” said Bruci, who defeated Hannah Chase of Alma 428-323 in the championship match. “I threw a split, but I’m still happy with everything.
“I pretty much threw the same shot all day. I made an adjustment of three to four boards all day, and my shot was in the oil, so I was good all day.”
Bruci averaged 199.4 for 14 games on Saturday.
“I’ve been here all four years, and this is the first year I qualified for singles,” she said. “I walked in and thought I was not going to walk away without a state championship.”
Click for full boys results and full girls results.
PHOTO: MHSAA Division 3 singles champions Heather Bruci of Richmond and Sam Brandt of Fremont.