Rogers City Teams Eager to Begin, Aiming to Add to Bowling Tradition
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
December 15, 2023
Rogers City’s bowling team is on a roll. And the Hurons haven’t even had their first competition of the season.
Rogers City has a decorated past, including winning the first state bowling championship in 1999, organized by the Bowling Center Association of Michigan, against a field including schools of all sizes and five years before the addition of MHSAA Finals in the sport. The boys team also was the Division 4 team runner-up at the first Class C-D Finals hosted by the MHSAA in 2004.
The Hurons hope to return to those glory days by bringing back experienced bowlers on both the boys and girls teams. Rogers City last qualified teams for the Finals in 2020 – when both the boys and girls advanced – and both teams hope to make a run at the Northern Michigan Conference title and land a spot at this season’s Finals in March.
The boys did find success last year — with just four bowlers — placing ahead of a handful of teams at its Regional. This year, Rogers City has a full boys team, and more, including junior Gavin Rhode, who qualified for the Singles Finals last year. The Hurons also are returning senior Conner Muller and sophomore Gabe Mina; Muller narrowly missed qualifying for the Finals last winter. And they are excited to see how first-year bowlers Blaise Szatkowski, Cooper Heinzel, George Karsten, Jacob Wickersham and Ryan Morgan perform.
The girls are returning seniors Arianna Anderson and Sophia Mina and sophomore Olivia Reyes. First-year bowlers Ruby Svay – an exchange student – and freshman Brooke Crawford compose the rest of the squad.
Both the boys and the girls have added strong bowlers with incoming freshmen, including Wickersham, a 180-average bowler.
“With a small school you kind of know what is coming along,” long-time coach Brian Bannasch said. “Even with our limited numbers last year, we were still competitive.”
The Hurons will open their season Jan. 6. As has been the case for years, matches will take place on Saturdays for optimal lane availability.
“After the success previous to COVID, the last couple years have really been a letdown just not having enough bodies,” Bannasch acknowledged. “We still sent kids to the state finals individually, but team-wise were just lacking numbers with a small school that has under 175 in the high school.
“When you lose any number of kids, it is tough to replace them,” he continued. “We are really excited to have numbers this year.”
The bowling program has been battling lower overall school enrollment and competing with basketball and wrestling teams for roster numbers.
Long hours in the alley for practice, traveling for matches and competing are paying off for the Hurons. Those long hours are the same for the coaches, forcing absence from the family business.
But it’s being done with a focus on a road trip to the Division 4 Finals in March, at Northway Lanes in Muskegon.
The boys and girls Regionals, hosted by Traverse City Christian, will be held at Lucky Jacks in Traverse City.
“We definitely have individuals expecting to qualify as individuals on the boys side,” Bannasch said. “We have three girls that have bowled before and fewer teams in each Regional.
“We had a pretty powerful Regional,” he continued. “Maybe with fewer teams, it could work to our advantage.”
Bannasch, whose family owns the local bowling alley Nautical Lanes, has been the boys and girls bowling coach from the beginning at Rogers City. The school started with a club team prior to making it a varsity sport.
Bannasch has seen a lot of talented bowlers develop through his youth programs and then vie for championships in high school. The Hurons often have had more than a dozen bowlers on the boys team.
Bannasch points to every bowler in Rogers City history competing in at least one varsity match every year as key to the team’s historical success. His unique philosophy of participation often has paid dividends.
“One of the things that has helped us be successful is that I have a little different philosophy than most coaches,” Bannasch noted. “We’ve had years where we’ve had 12 or 14 boys and 10 girls.
“We had JV matches, but we never consider it JV – they were all part of the varsity bowling team,” he continued. “In the next year, they have experienced that and know what the varsity match is all about.”
Bannasch also has watched other conference schools win or contend for Finals titles, something he points to with pride.
Bannasch spotlighted Cheboygan’s boys having won the Division 2 title in 2009 and Boyne City’s boys — as a newer program — finishing Division 3 runners-up in 2020 and 2021. Cheboygan’s girls finished Division 3 runners-up in 2022.
“Our success has been great, but I take just as much pride in the success of our conference,” Bannasch said. “We’re such a close-knit conference, it is great to see anybody up here be successful at it.”
Tom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Rogers City’s bowling teams have high aspirations this winter with their first competitions coming up next month. (Middle) Gavin Rhode, a Finals qualifier last season, practices recently. (Below) Arianna Anderson, left, and Sophia Mina are seniors on the girls team. (Photos by Richard Lamb/Presque Isle Newspapers.)
'Battle-Tested' Frankenmuth Sweeps Match Play to Clinch 1st Finals Title
By
Jeff Bleiler
Special for MHSAA.com
March 1, 2024
JACKSON – Ron Krueger is old school, so the Frankenmuth High School boys bowling team decided to throw it back to the 1980s.
It worked to perfection as the Eagles pounded the pins at Jax 60 in Jackson on Friday with urethane balls — made popular decades ago and experiencing a resurgence during the past few years — to win the Division 3 championship, the program's first Finals title.
Frankenmuth polished off a perfect day in the match play portion of the Final with a dominating performance over Milan, sweeping the best-of-five Baker match 221-126, 196-154 and 199-156.
“We got a little niche (with urethane), and it worked out really well,” Krueger said. I knew that if we could get in the top eight, with the new format being head-to-head best of five, we were tested throughout the year with Bakers.
“We’ve bowled a lot of tough tournaments and faced a lot of tough teams. And I knew we could compete against the top ones here today.”
The Eagles qualified fifth after eight Baker games and two regular games with 3,393 pins and dispatched Portland in the Quarterfinals with games of 154, 214 and 216. They topped top seed Gladwin in the Semifinals shooting 201, 134 and 201.
In the Final, they opened the first game with five of seven strikes while Milan struggled through seven opens over the first nine frames. About the only thing that could stop the Eagles was the gutter — which came into play at an inauspicious time during the second game. The team had a spare and four strikes in a row before throwing gutters on three of the next four shots.
That could have derailed a lesser team, but Frankenmuth responded with a double to win the second game comfortably.
“That’ll put a little stress on you, but again, that’s what this team is made of,” Krueger said. “The guy that came up behind steps up and throws a strike and we mark behind that and away we go.”
Frankenmuth made up for some of the disappointment from last year’s postseason when the Eagles missed qualifying for the Finals by 11 pins. Krueger said the team responded by returning to the lanes the next week and training the entire summer, showing resolve and commitment.
“I didn’t think from the beginning of the season we’d go on to actually qualify for the state championship,” said senior Mayson Knop, who last weekend won the singles competition at his Regional. “But we just kept qualifying first in tournaments over and over, and it was like, ‘Wow, we actually have a shot at this thing.’ And then absolutely popping off during match play, it’s an unbelievable feeling. There’s no words to even describe it.”
Knop will join junior teammates Miles Paetz and Liam Liddle at the Singles Final on Saturday, a week after they swept the top three Regional positions, and Krueger has a good feeling about how they will fare.
“All have a really good shot,” Krueger said. “They all threw a lot of balls today so they should feel real comfortable going into tomorrow. I think they’re prepared. All you want to do is make that cut.
“Once you get into the cut, the pressure is on and our guys are battle-tested.”
Milan qualified sixth with 3,358 and beat Blissfield in three straight, then advanced to the Final with a 3-1 victory over Midland Bullock Creek.