Don’t be alarmed: if you’ve never considered bowling a high school sport, you are not alone. The trend only started about 25 years ago and is mainly concentrated on the East Coast. While only a few colleges in the West have teams, high schools across Washington and Whatcom County are jumping on the bandwagon in a big way. And Meridian girls bowling coach Gregg Hill thinks it’s about time that everybody knew.
Meet Bowling’s Biggest Supporter
Originally from the Kent area, Hill earned a degree in Psychology and Sociology from Western Washington University and a Masters in Teaching from City University. He also met his wife in Bellingham and took a job with Cascade Connections. Twenty-five years later, he still works on and off with Cascade Connections – the current teacher with their Community Transition Program – is raising four daughters and has spent the last eight years teaching math, science, English and more at Ferndale, Nooksack and Meridian High Schools.
Perhaps most importantly, he has spent the last four years as a bowling coach. It all started with his second-oldest daughter, Emma. Two of Emma’s friends told her in the hallway at school that they signed her up for bowling, and then she texted her parents not to pick her up from the high school but from Mt Baker Lanes in Ferndale.
Then, the first match came around, and she texted her dad, “The coach gave us uniforms. They’re going to keep score.” I said, ‘Sure, it’s a sport.’ And she said, ‘No, it’s not, it’s bowling.’ And then, around the third or fourth match, she texted ‘Dad, they don’t have enough people on varsity, so I’m going to bowl for varsity this week – it’s a sport!” Hill says with a laugh.
Because Hill went to every match and practice during Emma’s first year, then head coach Mike Holz suggested that he apply for the assistant coaching position in the second year of the program.
“That was the COVID year, and the season was shortened, and teams were limited to four bowlers,” says Hill. “The following year, I found myself in the head coaching position of a three-year-old program that stumbled into existence during COVID. We had no equipment, and bowlers were borrowing shoes and using house balls wherever we went.”
The Coach Learns Along With The Players
With a lifelong bowling experience of only playing “a half dozen times, at youth groups and birthday parties,” Hill needed to learn quickly. Fortunately, the local scene is small and new enough that rival teams are willing to work together to strengthen the overall program. “My first year, the coach at Jackson [High School in Everett] gave me all of his information, he made copies of everything for me and every time we would see them at a match, he would ask me how it was going, and work with me,” he says. And, of course, Hill will go online to pick up pointers from professionals like Verity Crawley.
Through his own experience playing sports in school, Hill knows that he needs to prioritize a different set of needs than most other coaches because the sport is so new to the athletes. “Most of the girls on the team have never been in a competitive sport, so I’m just helping them mentally to remove all that negative thinking. That way, they can just go out there, be consistent with how they release the ball and compete to be successful,” he says.
Rather than trying to be positive 100% of the time, Hill suggests finding a neutral mindset and allowing progress to happen on its own. “When they see they have two pins left, I want them to think, ‘I’m going to pick up my spare.’ You can see the shift in their mindset from ‘Don’t miss it’ to ‘I’ve got this, it’s already done, I’m just going through the motions.’ It helps them figure out who they are and what they can accomplish, and that’s going to help in bowling and school, and it’s going to help them in life,” he says.
A Home-Grown Success Story
Hill’s investment in the team is easy to understand since it started at home. His daughter Emma had an athletic background from her years of studying different types of dance, but she had no experience with sports. On top of that, she was navigating high school during the COVID pandemic and decided to finish high school in Running Start Whatcom and attend Western online when she graduated, staying at home as much as possible rather than running the risk of being out in public.
But once she bowled with her friends and joined the team, her drive and personality made her an obvious choice as team captain. And her confidence exploded. “On a scale of one to ten, she probably went from a two to an eight in just a couple of months,” Hill says. It wasn’t long before she earned a spot at District and State competitions and decided to find a collegiate bowling program. “She might not have the highest average on the team, but her drive and leadership skills are going to help the team. And the confidence that allows her to do that speaks volumes about what she accomplished in high school,” says Hill.
The Road From Local To National Success
Hill recently got an overall view of the sport when he traveled to Las Vegas to watch Emma compete in a national tournament. Fifty-six men’s varsity teams and a combined 56 men’s JV and women’s varsity teams from different colleges and universities competed for four days, followed by another two days of individual tournaments.
Here in Whatcom County, he can already see the potential to set some of his bowlers on the path to those competitions. “If they want to bowl in college, they can probably get a scholarship with a 145-150 average. If they want a full ride, they’d probably need to bowl a 170 plus,” Hill says. Diva Marsh of the Bellingham Co-Op team (which blends students from combines Sehome, Squalicum and Bellingham) earned the season’s highest average, 193.1.
Hill’s second youngest daughter, Dakota, ranked tenth, with a 138.8 average. With bowlers from Mount Vernon, Burlington-Edison, Everett, Anacortes, Ferndale and Blaine filling out the standings, Hill has plenty of reason to spread the word about his team’s accomplishments. And he is always ready to remind people that some of his athletes’ successes aren’t shown in the statistics, although the Meridian girls bowling finished 11-3 in the regular season, good enough for 2nd place in the Northwest Conference, a high school conference for 1A, 2A, 3A, and 4A schools in Whatcom, Skagit, and Island Counties.
“I grew up playing baseball, basketball and football, and you’d have competition within your own team, with everybody trying to tear each other down,” says Hill. “But bowling is a community, a big huge family where everybody is supporting everybody, and it doesn’t matter that you’re competing against each other. It’s just a very different community.”
