The Olympic girls bowling team idled in fourth place, nearly 300 pins off the pace, after the first day of the Class 3A state bowling championships at Narrows Plaza in Tacoma.
Senior Alaina Howell’s 162 average through six regular games was the team’s highest, but it was only the 13th-best overall. And Liza Ambrose, who anchored the Lady Trojans to a 14-1 record and the Olympic League regular-season title, finished the day 35th overall with a 148.
The team favored by some to win it all was suddenly in danger of missing the podium all together.
“Every girl out here struggled, on almost all the teams,” said co-coach Dave Colby of Friday’s action.
But the Lady Trojans returned Saturday to shave about 200 pins off the deficit, leapfrog two teams and earn a second-place finish. Only West Valley, which knocked down 7,020 pins over the two-day event, topped Olympic (6,962).
“They kept fighting, they didn’t quit,” Colby said. “We are extremely proud of our girls.”
With 14 Baker games comprising the second day of competition, Olympic closed the gap on West Valley, Bremerton and R.A. Long, hurdling the latter two before falling 58 pins shy of West Valley.
“We had a couple low games, but for the most part the girls came out and threw (well),” Colby said, pointing to the team’s high game of 225 as well as a handful of games in the “190s.”
“We knew we had to pound our mark out there and our girls did it. We stayed focused as much as we could. Nobody gave up, absolutely nobody.”
Both Colby and co-coach Kris Howell said they were impressed with the team’s resiliency given the pressure and sluggish start of Day 1 and the urgency to make up ground entering Day 2.
“Our girls were watching the scores on all the lanes, so they knew what they had to get,” Colby said. “They hung in there like troopers.”
“They never gave up … even when they weren’t doing so hot, not one of them stopped smiling or cheering each other on,” Howell added. “They didn’t hang their heads, they just kept going.”
For the Lady Trojans, the second-place finish capped a successful season that included a district championship. Two of the team’s top six rollers — Alma Levario and Alaina Howell — graduate in June, but the remaining rollers will return next season.
“Our seniors have been a part of this program for four seasons and they’ve done extremely well,” Colby said.
And while neither Levario nor Howell landed the state championship they’d hoped for, both said they were proud to end their high school careers with a second-place finish.
“The first day we were behind so much … it was the last day, we had to do it,” Howell said. “We are kind of used to the pressure now. We just came out here and we weren’t really nervous, just doing our thing.”
Final team scores
1. West Valley 7,020; 2. Olympic 6,962; 3. Bremerton 6,826; 4. R.A. Long 6,807; 5. Mark Morris 6,620; 6. Klahowya 6,515; 7. Everett 6,486; 8. Columbia River 6,466.
