Three times a week, Colonial Lanes become busy with the scuffling of City High students getting ready for practice. They set their bags down as coaches check in. The bowling season has begun. 

“Both of the teams are really new this year. We have really young bowlers and a lot of new bowlers, especially on the guys’ team. I think we only have three returning varsity members. It’s really exciting. We’re all friends,” Carlie Prymek ‘21 said. 

Prymek has been bowling with her mother, grandmother, and uncle throughout her childhood. Now, she meets with the team every week to run drills and play games. Drills focus on a specific part of the game, and help the team to improve their skills. 

“[We practice our] approach when we walk up to the lane to bowl. Or we may just do the last step of our approach. There’s other ones where we will kneel in the gutter and try to hook the ball from the right corner to the left corner. It’s really repetitive,” Prymek explained. 

These weekly practices not only improve the team’s bowling form, but also determine who will make the varsity team. Due to the increase in members, the women’s team is able to have both junior and varsity levels. These teams both require at least four bowlers. 

“The girls team has a great dynamic. It’s a lot of fun. The coaches are super nice, and super amazing. They’re great bowlers,” Prymek said. 

Dylan Irvin ‘21 is the captain of the boys bowling team, which has 20 members as of this year. As captain, he is focusing on making sure everyone is keeping up with the team’s goal to improve overall. 

“We want to be the best we can be. We don’t have a lot of people, but we want to get everyone up to where we need to be,” Irvin said. 

Both bowlers agreed that despite the low number of players, everyone enjoys getting together to work on the sport. 

“We are closely knit. We’re all just trying to improve as bowlers. Everyone has to support each other,” Irvin said.  

This year, City High bowlers are striving to move up the ranks in high-school bowling. Despite this, they know that not every game will be perfect. 

“The coaches always tell us that if you bowl a bad ball, just move on. We apply that to everything,” Prymek said. 

Bowling is a small community in a large school. The teams work hard to prove that small numbers can still come out strong.

“We aren’t just there for City. We all know each other from different things and City High just brings us together even more,” Prymek said.