Oxford, Kettering Earn 1st Championships
March 2, 2018
By Keith Dunlap
Special for Second Half
STERLING HEIGHTS – It’s rare when one MHSAA team championship bowling match comes down to the last frame.
But twice on the same day?
That is what will forever make the 2018 Division 1 Finals at Sterling Lanes so unforgettable.
The Oxford girls and Waterford Kettering boys teams both rejoiced in winning their first titles in school history, as both pulled out their matches in the final frame.
Oxford’s girls team outlasted Macomb Dakota, which entered the regular game of the championship match trailing by 26 pins. Dakota rallied and actually was leading in total pins going into the last two bowlers before Oxford’s duo of juniors Megan Armbruster and Claire Sandstrom made sure the reigning runner-up Wildcats wouldn’t lose in the Final two years in a row.
Armbruster bowled two strikes and finished with 27 pins in her 10th frame to set up the last between Sandstrom and Dakota anchor bowler Danielle McBride.
Unfortunately for Dakota, McBride had an unlucky split on her first ball of the 10th frame, leaving three pins and only being able to pick up two of them.
With the door open, Sandstrom bowled a strike and then added nine more pins in her 10th frame to finish off the title for Oxford.
“A weight was lifted off of my shoulders,” Sandstrom said of when she saw McBride’s ball end with a split. “But I had to stay focused on what I was doing and make my shot.”
For Oxford coach JR Lafnear, it was the end of a 13-year quest for a Finals title, one that nearly resulted in a championship last year before the Wildcats fell to powerhouse Davison in the title match.
“That is what propelled them to work so hard over the summer in practice,” Lafnear said. “Shooting spares and corner pins and doing all that stuff. They were here and got a taste of all the excitement. They really wanted to get it done this year.”
Dakota was seeking its second Division 1 title after winning in 2015.
“They battled through a lot of adversity today and could have gotten knocked out several times,” Dakota coach Kevin Wemyss said. “They showed their character today.”
The boys tournament ended in similar dramatic fashion.
Davison held an 11-pin lead over Kettering after the two Baker games, and the match stayed close until the final frame of the regular game.
The last bowler of the match was Kettering junior Hunter Gates, who stepped up needing 14 pins to give his team the title.
Gates firmly got a strike on the first roll to send the Kettering team jumping for joy, and then the celebration officially began on the next ball when Gates knocked down seven pins.
When he did so, he quickly put his hands over his face and wept tears of joy as he was mobbed by teammates.
“I was just trying to stay cool, calm and collected,” Gates said. “Bowl like I know how I do. My teammates had all the faith in the world in me.”
Kettering head coach JR Olerich said he wasn’t sure if Gates knew he needed only four pins on what turned out to be his final ball.
“If he did, it probably would have been a little bit tougher,” Olerich said. “We all knew.”
Kettering achieved a rarity in that it went wire-to-wire for the title.
The Captains finished first out of the qualifying block before beating No. 8 seed Hudsonville by three pins in the quarterfinals (1,285-1,282) and Saline by 39 pins (1,298-1,259) in a semifinal.
Davison qualified as the No. 2 seed before beating Walled Lake Central in the quarterfinals (1,322-1,227) and Macomb L’Anse Creuse North in the semifinals (1,403-1,335).
Davison was trying to carry the torch at the Finals for the powerhouse girls program, which failed to qualify for the tournament after winning it five of the previous six years.
This was the first time the boys team advanced to the championship match.
“We graduated four starters from last year, so we were really looking at this as a rebuilding year,” Davison coach Robert Tubbs said. “But we went into Regionals and we won the Regional, and we came in here and qualified second. We looked at it as house money. It’s hard for those guys to take it on the chin and say you were four pins from a state championship. These guys, they are not my best average team in my 14 years, but they got more heart, more grit and more determination than any other team I have coached.”
The Oxford girls finished second out of the qualifying block and then earned wins over Saginaw Heritage (1,223-1,207) in the quarterfinals and Holt (1,193-1,152) in the semifinals.
Dakota qualified fifth and then beat Bay City Western (1,164-1,119) in the quarterfinals and No. 1-seed Jenison (1,330-1,157) in the semifinals.
Flint Corridor Powers Girls Bowling's Best
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
December 13, 2017
Girls bowling teams in the Flint area do not need to drive far to find high-level competition.
A 28-mile route can be taken from reigning Division 3 champion Birch Run – just north of the Saginaw/Genesee county line – to Division 1 champion Davison. And along the way, one can see 2016-17 Division 2 champion Flint Kearsley out the window.
It’s quite a consolidation of power in a single sport, but one that shouldn’t be too surprising to those who follow bowling.
“Whenever you think of bowling alleys,” Birch Run coach Teddy Villarreal said, “you think of either the Flint area or Detroit.”
The majority of girls bowling teams in the state will spend their seasons chasing these three teams. Some – including Birch Run, which claimed its first MHSAA title last winter – have been doing that with Kearsley and Davison for years.
“Whenever you go to a tournament and you hear Kearsley and Davison – remember when (Michael) Jordan was playing basketball? That is what it’s like whenever you’re facing Kearsley and facing Davison,” Villarreal said.
The Kearsley and Davison bowling rivalry is a friendly one.
The two schools are about 10 miles apart. Rob Ploof, who coaches both the Kearlsey boys and girls, and Davison boys coach Bob Tubbs stood in each other’s weddings as the best man.
Their girls teams have mirrored each other in recent years, each having won five of the past six MHSAA titles in their respective divisions. Since the frequent meetings between former Big Nine Conference foes now happen in nonconference tournaments, they serve mostly to benefit both teams in a competitive sense.
“We see them at a lot of tournaments, and we’re kind of close to their team, I would say,” Kearsley senior Barbara Hawes said. “We’re rivals, but I feel like it’s just a friendly competition, and it’s competition that makes us better because our scores are so close and we have the same end goal.”
They weren’t always the teams being chased, of course. Early in his tenure, Ploof made a point to seek out Sterling Heights Stevenson, which was a state power in the mid-to-late 2000s.
“When I started my first year of coaching, Sterling Heights Stevenson had won a state title, so I wanted to find out who the coach was and ask him how he did it,” Ploof said. “He said, ‘Get your kids into tournaments, and get them good competition.’ I said, ‘Which tournaments are you guys in, because I’m going to those ones.’”
The Kearsley and Davison girls each reached the pinnacle in 2012, claiming their first MHSAA Finals titles and starting their current runs of dominance.
While seeking out top-notch competition has been a big part of the rise of both programs, perhaps the biggest has been the youth bowling scene in the Flint area, which Ploof said is tremendous. He credits a lot of that to Jim Teuber, the owner of Richfield Bowl, which serves as Kearsley’s home venue. Ploof said Teuber runs a youth program that busses about 150 kids to the bowling alley to learn the game at a young age.
Middle school programs in the area also seeing high turnout, which feeds into the high schools.
“The whole Flint area is kind of on board with that,” Ploof said. “Last year, we had 50 teams in our program -- Kearsley had six, Davison had five, Grand Blanc has six teams -- that definitely makes bowling for kids in our area better. That’s why you’re seeing the success from our area; it’s starting with the middle school kids.”
Competing for Kearsley is something bowlers look forward to from an early age. This season, 22 girls tried out for the team, allowing Ploof to field multiple junior varsity squads.
“I think that it’s what everyone aspires to get to throughout their years,” Hawes said. “We have a lot of youth programs, and most of the kids that work at the bowling alley are the high school bowlers who are like coaches. In our bowling alley, we have the mini state title trophies, and we have our banners up, so they see those things at a young age.”
While the bowlers at Birch Run don’t aspire to be members of the Kearsley team, they have been looking to get to that level. There’s still a ways to go to achieve that type of sustained success, but the Panthers feel they’re at least on the right path.
“The bowling teams before us (at Birch Run) were pretty good, and definitely set high standards,” Birch Run junior Madison Hoffman said. “I think we’ve definitely improved, and you could say we definitely achieved a lot of our goals, and we really set the standards higher.”
Hoffman added that she and her teammates believe they can compete now when they see Kearsley or Davison in a tournament, which is a big step forward.
It’s something Hawes and her Kearsley teammates welcome.
“I think it’s really cool to see how teams are looking up to us, because we’ve worked so hard to get to this point,” Hawes said. “It’s really cool to see people trying to compete at a higher level.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) The Flint Kearsley girls bowling team hoists its Division 2 championship trophy last season. (Middle) Birch Run’s girls celebrated their first MHSAA Finals title last winter. (Below) Like Kearsley, Davison has built a string of successful finishes in Division 1. (Davison and Kearsley photos courtesy of those schools’ bowling programs; Birch Run’s photo courtesy of Teddy Villarreal.)