A Match Made for Champions - Intercollegiate Bowling Championships

The Nebraska women and Western Illinois men--who last took national crowns in 1999--paired up as the best college bowling squads of 2001

COLLEGE BOWLING COACHES certainly don't have to worry about lurking agents whispering sweet nothings to undergrads about the millions of dollars there for the taking if they turn pro, so there's no danger of their teams' stars abandoning them early to enter an overhyped professional draft. Heck, most coaches are lucky if they are able to get their players to sell enough phone cards or Christmas wreaths, or get enough "Strike-a-thon" fund-raising pledges, to help finance road trips to tournaments. And TV exposure, even for the Final Four teams at the Intercollegiate Bowling Championships, isn't a given.

No, the world of men's and women's collegiate bowling doesn't receive attention like big-time basketball, football, or baseball--or even volleyball, wrestling, or soccer. On the national radar, it's akin to ... well, stone-skipping or Frisbee.

But those who follow bowling can't help but admire the athleticism, endurance, skill, and pure spunk of the men and women who--as in any of the higher-profile college sports--battle tough conditions, personal anxieties, physical hardships, and, often, long odds to bring honor and glory to themselves and their universities.

Don't think for a moment that the University of Nebraska women's team and the Western Illinois men's team weren't heroes on April 21 after bringing 2001 national titles from the IBC Tournament at Spectrum Lanes in Wyoming, Mich., home to their respective campuses in Lincoln, Neb., and Macomb, Ill.

Coincidentally, the last time both teams won championships was in the same year (1999). For Nebraska, the women's win was the school's seventh bowling title in 11 years. The women have five, including 1991, 1995, 1997, and 1999, and the men won titles in 1990 and 1996.

Bill Straub's Cornhuskers needed two matches in the best-of-seven Baker format to win, first losing 4-3 to Arizona State, then beating the Sun Devils 4-1. Coach Randy Widger's Western Illinois Leathernecks rallied from a 3-2 deficit to defeat Florida State, 4.3, after going undefeated in the double-elimination format.

Nebraska star Diandra Hyman--BOWLING DIGEST'S 1999-2000 Women's College Bowler of the Year and a three-season Team USA member--savored the triumph which helped bowling keep pace with the other sports in which her fellow Cornhuskers are bringing titles home to Lincoln on a regular basis. "I love it [at Nebraska]. I wouldn't choose to go anywhere else," says the junior from Dyer, Ind., who first picked up a national championship ring two years ago as a freshman. "There's no place like Nebraska. That is sort of their slogan. You think there's nothing else but corn, but this is a good university and there's a lot of pride here, not just in football, but everything. The baseball team is ranked No. 1 and the volleyball team won the nationals."

Straub has had the benefit of awarding scholarships ever since the NCAA recognized bowling as an "emerging sport" in 1995 and Nebraska gave varsity status to women's bowling. Swaub has five full athletic scholarships to dole out, as well as incremental scholarships for as many as 15 players. Hyman has a full ride, while freshman sensation Shannon Pluhowsky, who swept every major award this year and is BOWLING DIGEST'S 2000-01 Women's College Bowler of the Year, has a half-scholarship and, needless to say, has earned a full ride next season.

"[Athletic department officials] make certain we realize how important we are," Straub .says. "They make sure we're taken care of. Last time they waited until football season, and at halftime of a game brought us to midfield and presented us with our rings and the trophy from College Bowling USA."

Federal Title IX mandates that in 1972 began requiring equal access to scholarships and programs for women finally have given a boost to women's bowling. But Title IX has almost assured that men's bowling won't be promoted to a scholarship sport. Widger says he doesn't expect anything more than a club-level designation for his men's team any time soon, but he's still comfortable with the accolades and attention that come with winning championships.

"The school has given us great support and a lot of exposure," he says. "I feel lucky the way the school is supporting us. They've been putting together a banquet for us. We had a welcome-home reception, and they made sure we got in all the local newspapers."

Unlike Nebraska's across-the-board athletic dominance, national championships are few and far between for the Leathernecks. "We had a national championship golf team here a long time ago," Widger says. "That's the only other one we've had. We do get a lot of respect. When we started here, [people] hardly knew Western had a bowling team. Now they look forward to picking up the paper and seeing an article about us. We've placed in the top 10 in our last 35 tournaments." And the team's success already has paid recruiting dividends. On the Monday morning after the IBC tournament, Widger says he'd received more than 50 e-mails from kids interested in Western's bowling program.

For anchor Derek Sapp, a junior, the championship ring was his first, and he wouldn't have gotten it had he not struck out in the final frame of the seven-game series against St. John's in the semifinals. "Those were probably the three hardest shots I've ever had to make," he says of the turkey, which gave the Leathermecks a 246-232 win in the game and a 4-3 match triumph, thrusting them into the championship against Florida State. "I want to be as good as I can be. I feel I'm on top of the mountain now, and I hope I don't come down for a while."

Widger says players go to Western Illinois because of the bowling reputation the program has built up there under his regime in the last three years and for about a dozen years prior, when Jeff Stockton was the coach. Nebraska draws players with its winning reputation, too, including bowlers from Australia, Colombia, and Korea. Hyman tried once last summer to talk Pluhowsky--who was bowling well in junior leagues in her hometown of Phoenix--into going to Nebraska, and Straub had an eye on her ever since he saw Pluhowsky bowl in Orlando in 1999. when she won Junior Olympic gold and qualified for the Junior Olympic Team USA.

Straub and assistant coach Paul Kiempa, an ex-Cornhuskers bowler, teach both the men's and women's teams at the university's six-lane center in the Student Union building. Widger runs his program out of University Lanes, a 16-lane center at Western Illinois.

While bowling is still considered an "emerging sport" by the NCAA, it can become an official NCAA sport and have an NCAA-sponsored national championship if at least 40 schools give bowling varsity status. Currently, there are 27 schools with NCAA-approved status and 154 schools with club or varsity programs, with 2,210 participants (1,419 men and 791 women). Those figures are up 8.6% since the formation of College Bowling USA for the 1998-99 season. "That's the first steady increase in college bowling in years," says Diane Olson, director of collegiate bowling for CBUSA. "There is definitely a growth in interest across the country, particularly on the varsity level."

Crystal Bailey, captain of the North Carolina A&T team that was one of just three schools (Nebraska and Sacred Heart of Connecticut were the others) with NCAA-approved status at the nationals, says she has been "tremendously impressed by College Bowling USA's efforts. They're making great strides in getting bowling more recognition on the college level, which I think will translate into more recognition on the higher levels as more college bowlers move on to play professionally."

One of Western Illinois' most recent success stories was Jeremy Sonnenfeld, the star senior on its 1998-99 title team. Sonnenfeld, who plans to join the pro tour (as does Sapp eventually), was the first bowler ever to roll a sanctioned 900 series. He threw the three perfect games on February 2, 1997, in a bowling fund-raising tournament. (Imagine how stunned anyone who made donation pledges for every strike achieved were after that performance.)

Sapp was the most valuable player at this year's men's finals, anchoring a Leathernecks squad that also included Pete Albanese, Scott Bentley, Clay Herrbach, and Shane Keefauver, plus extra man Shawn Wochner. Sapp was joined on the all-tournament team by Anthony Corrao of runner-up Florida State, Nathan Bohr of Wichita State, David Eisenberg of St. John's, and Michigan State's Josh Keller.

Pluhowsky was the anchor for Nebraska, despite being only a freshman, with Hyman bowling in the No. 4 spot. Christine Couvillon bowled leadoff, followed by Suzanne Medwell and Kari Schwager, with Paola Gomez as the fill-in. The 5'5", 120-pound Pluhowsky walked away with the season MVP award and rookie of the year honors, plus an All-America designation. Amy Rocco-Stolz of runner-up Arizona State was the tournament MVP, and was joined on the all-tournament team by teammate Brandi Wolfe, Pluhowsky, Amy Dillon of Wichita State, Robin Crawford of Morehead State, and Shippensburg University's Marrisha Freeman.

Under Baker rules, each of five bowlers rolls two frames. The lead bowler, for instance, bowls the first and sixth frames. The anchor bowls frames five and 10. "Tournaments for years were hybrids, especially toward national championships," Straub says. "with a combination of regular format and Baker. A couple years ago they said if we're stuck with Baker, let's do it 100% of the time, so since 1999 it's been all Baker. We got rid of the rotten stepladder format at the same time. That was done to further the cause of TV, which I support. The stepladder was inherently unfair because you spent so much time to get there and then throw it away with a [one loss and you're out] stepladder."

To accommodate TV during the change, the double-elimination phase was cut for the finals, shortening the tournament for viewers. This year, though, there was no commercial sponsor and no TV coverage, so the double-elimination continued. That proved a crucial turn for Nebraska, which otherwise would not have had the opportunity to recover from its first-series setback to Arizona State.

"You get into the issue of what's more important, to be on TV or to be fair," says an ebullient Hyman. "It's more important for us to be fair. It doesn't bother me that it wasn't on TV. We had someone who taped it for our school highlight film."

This title is "sweeter" than the 1998-99 championship, Hyman says, "because we have come a long way as a team. It came down to bowling our hearts out, and that's what we did. We wanted it so bad. It's true, if you want something so bad and work your heart out, it comes true.

"We were third in sectionals; we had a really bad tournament. It gave us three weeks to reflect on what we had to do before nationals. We worked all year--and then we weren't ready. It scared us all. If we had won sectionals, we would not have reflected as much as we did."

Says Pluhowsky: "I expected us to bowl good. I knew we had a lot of talent, and it was just a matter of coming together at the right times. I was really happy. We worked really hard. There's no other way to end the good year we had without winning."

As for her awards, Pluhowsky says, "A lot of people told me I'd get them all. But I'm most surprised at bowler of the year. All of [the individual awards] mean something, but winning the championship means more. I'm here to bowl with a team, not for myself."

Arizona State trailed 3-2 before winning the final two games, 198-172 and 212-171, to stave off elimination against Nebraska. At a critical juncture, Straub took two of his younger players who were feeling the pressure out of the settee area for a casual, non-bowling talk, which seemed to relax them. "Besides coaching the physical aspect of the game, what we do is psychological," he says.

The Cornhuskers, down 1-0 in the final series, won four games in a row, with the fourth being a 182-181 squeaker in which Pluhowsky needed a 10th-frame strike and a spare. That's exactly what she got.

"[Coaches Straub and Klempa] have been great with my physical game and getting me to stay relaxed and calm in pressure situations, like the 10th frame at nationals," Pluhowsky says. "There were things we prepared for all year, and what it came down to was me. I used what I was taught to the best of my ability to make the last two shots of the game."

Another perennial power, Wichita State, finished third, followed by Shippensburg. The other women's IBC qualifiers were Ball State, Cal State-Fresno, Central Missouri State, Erie Community College, Florida, Florida State, Illinois State, Indiana State, Morehead State, North Carolina A&T State, Sacred Heart, and Washington State.

In the men's finale, Western Illinois rallied from a 3-1 deficit to earn the title against Florida State, taking the last three games 221-192, 220-177, and 212-180. "Students think it's cool," Sapp says of the accomplishment. "Even though it's bowling, they know it's a national championship like in any other sport. Our one goal all year was to win the national championship. Individual awards are not important."

St. John's was third among the men, with Wichita State fourth. The other men's qualifiers were Arizona State. Central Missouri State, Erie Community College, Kansas, Michigan State, Nebraska, Penn State, Purdue, Saginaw Valley State, San Jose State, Utah, and Washington State.

At an awards ceremony earlier in the week, Karl Nickolai of Michigan State was named Coach of the Year by the National Collegiate Bowling Coaches Association. Bill O'Neill, a freshman at Saginaw Valley State in Michigan, was named the NCBCA's Men's Bowler of the Year. Next year's IBC tournament will be held in Buffalo.

IBC Men's Champions

2000-01                 Western Illinois
1999-2000                 West Texas A&M
1998-99                 Western Illinois
1997-98                    Wichita State
1996-97             Saginaw Valley State
1995-96                         Nebraska
1994-95                    Wichita State
1993-94                    Wichita State
1992-93                    Wichita State
1991-92                 William Paterson
1990-91             Saginaw Valley State
1989-90                         Nebraska
1988-89                  Fullerton State
1987-88                    Wichita State
1986-87                    Wichita State
1985-86           Erie Community College
1984-85               Wisconsin-LaCrosse
1983-84                    Indiana State
1982-83                        Vincennes
IBC Women's Champions

2000-01                         Nebraska
1999-2000                 Morehead State
1998-99                         Nebraska
1997-98                   Morehead State
1996-97                         Nebraska
1995-96                   West Texas A&M
1994-95                         Nebraska
1993-94                    Wichita State
1992-93                 William Paterson
1991-92                 West Texas State
1990-91                         Nebraska
1989-90                    Wichita State
1988-89                   Morehead State
1987-88                 West Texas State
1986-87                 West Texas State
1985-86                    Wichita State
1984-88                 West Texas State
1983-84                    Buffalo State
1982-83                 West Texas State

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