Vandercook Lake High School bowler Shelby Miller rolled a 391 series for the Jayhawks during a match at Suburban Lanes on Wednesday. Photo by Jeff Steers, JTV Sports.
By Jeff Steers
JTV Sports
Two of the top Michigan High School Athletic Association Division 4 bowling programs have new coaches at the helm.
Only a couple of the coaches have been around for a while.
Napoleon and Vandercook Lake high schools met Wednesday in a bowling match at Suburban Lanes in Jackson. Vandercook Lake edged Napoleon in boys’ bowling in overtime, 16-15.
Napoleon was too much for the Jayhawks in the girls’ match, 25-5.
The Cascades Conference match was a debut for VCL girls’ bowling coach Anthony Crabtree and boys’ coach Mike Abbey.
Crabtree takes over a program that has won seven state team bowling titles by Todd Reichard. Five bowlers have won individual state titles including Crabtree’s daughter Nicole – who was named the top bowler in Michigan in 2009.
Crabtree was an assistant coach at VCL for nearly a decade before becoming the head coach at East Jackson for a couple of seasons.
He said nobody wanted to follow Reichard and that success.
“I think maybe people were intimidated by the success,” Crabtree said. “But I wanted to keep it going.”
He was going to coach both before teams before Abbey said he would help. That help turned into the head coaching position.
“Tony didn’t have anyone else to help,” Abbey said. “My grandson is on the team, so I took the position.”
Abbey replaces Libie Ambs who led the Jayhawks to a Division 4 state team title in 2017. Both Reichard and Ambs have produced all-state bowlers on a yearly basis.
Brian Beaman replaced Randy Chesney as the head of the NHS bowling program. Beaman originally started the bowling program at NHS, left for a couple of years, and came back to help Chesney for a number of years.
Chesney produced two state championship bowlers on the boys’ side.
Beaman is a one-man-band coaching 13 girls and seven boys with a former bowler helping him.
“We have had a lot of individual success over the years, but the idea is to get teams to the state,” Beaman said. “Our girls’ team has quite a few seniors … this may be their time.”
Napoleon swept the Baker games – five bowlers working together to post one score by bowling two frames apiece – in the girls’ match and easily won the first individual contests. Alli Clark rolled a 189 and Alex Burgess finished with a 184 for Napoleon.
Vandercook Lake bowler Shelby Miller rolled a 391 series to lead the Jayhawks.
In the boys’ competition, Napoleon and Vandercook Lake split the Baker games and the Jayhawks easily won the first individual contest, 881-797, Napoleon bowler Logan Devlaminck got hot and rolled a 259 in the second individual contest.
Tied at 15-all, the contest was decided by a pair of Baker games. Devlaminck rolled three consecutive strikes to end the Baker game for Napoleon, but VCL won the first Baker game by 15 pins.
Cam Lackey of Vandercook Lake slammed the door on the Pirates with two strikes in the 10th frame to earn the win in the second Baker game.
