The Campbellsville University men’s and women’s bowling teams started their fall 2024 season with a successful kick-off tournament at the Greater Nashville Open over the weekend of Oct. 28. They are hopeful this season will be a record-setting success.
Ambrose Shirk, unofficial team captain for the CU men’s bowling team and first-year Master of Business Administration (MBA) student with an emphasis in human resource management, said this season has been the best of the five years he has bowled at CU.
“In our second and third tournaments of the season, we have finished third and fifth,” Shirk said. “And that includes [me] making All Tournament Team as well as four out of five of our starters averaging 200-plus.”
Shirk said the team faces new challenges each week, and they work together to face them as best as they can.
“We work hard in practice to become better and learn to face those challenges to the best of our abilities,” he said. “There are times when we have to do something that is not our strong suit, but we have to learn to do the best we can.”
The men’s bowling team practices three times a week for at least an hour and a half, according to Shirk. To him, being on the team is a rewarding experience because of his team members, all of whom are his friends.
“I have made lifelong friends on this team,” Shirk said. “I have also learned and become not only a better bowler but a more mature and experienced person. I have traveled the United States for all sorts of tournaments, collegiate and personal. I have learned so much from this game that I can use for the rest of my life.”
When Shirk first joined the bowling team five years ago in the beginning of college, there was a “big shakeup” of the team, according to Shirk, which led to most of the team quitting, as well as going from runner-up in the NAIA to being one of the worst in the conference. Shirk himself nearly left CU, but he said several friends reached out to him and showed him reasons to stay in Campbellsville. He added that he found his fiancée on the bowling team, as well as many close friends, and doesn’t know what his life would look like now if he had not stayed.
“My college experience was not a college experience that involved parties or any other type of ‘typical’ college behavior, but I think I have had one of the best experiences I could have asked for,” Shirk said. “College isn’t about parties, but instead making friendships and hopefully finding someone who you’ll want to spend the rest of your life with. I am blessed to have found both.”
CU sophomore Autumn Anderson, an exercise science major, is an anchor bowler on the women’s team. She said being in this position helps her learn how to manage stress.
“Being the last person to throw a ball can make or break your score,” Anderson said. “So, knowing how to control your emotions and staying calm is important.”
According to Anderson, the women’s bowling team has faced a lot challenges this season, from being short on bowlers to struggling to find participants to make a team that can travel. However, she is hopeful this season will finish strong.
“What I love most about being on the team is traveling to places you think you might never go to, such as last year the team traveled to Pennsylvania,” Anderson said. “And it was a really great experience. It has given me structure in my daily life and has held me accountable by attending practices and wanting to improve myself in every aspect, not just during the weekend tournaments, but in my classes.”
Anderson said her personal goals for this season are to improve her scores and form and to be a better teammate.
Andrew Swift, a fifth-year senior and mass communication major, is a starter on the men’s bowling team and has been for several years.
“The cool thing about bowling is that all our roles vary from tournament to tournament,” Swift said. “It all depends on who is bowling well on that particular day, who is the most reliable for strikes and spares overall and who’s game fits best for whatever oil pattern we are bowling on. For the vast majority of tournaments, I would say I am a top three bowler on the team.”
According to Swift, this season, so far, has been the best start to a season the team has ever had.
“We have bowled three tournaments and have finished top 10 in all of them and top five in two of them,” Swift said. “The most memorable moment at this point was finishing in third place at our previous tournament in Smyrna, Tennessee.”
Swift said being on the team has been the “longest roller coaster of emotions I have ever experienced.” They have had four or five different coaches over the past five years, according to Swift. This, he said, puts a lot of stress on the team because it’s a constantly changing environment.
“Each coach has had a different perspective on how things should be done, while all we want to do is bowl,” Swift said. “There have been many bowlers who have dropped out, transferred or failed, and it diminished our motivation at one point. But those who have stayed with the program have become my best friends, and we have stuck together throughout all that hardship. We now have a coach who returned for his second year, and things are looking up.”
In Swift’s freshman year, he struggled with grades and motivation to complete his schoolwork.
“There were distractions back home, COVID hit me hard, and I was not responsible about how I spent my time,” Swift said. “After being ineligible and not being able to travel my freshman year, there was a fire that got lit under me, and I did whatever I could to pass my classes and become eligible. My passion for bowling motivated me to be better in school.”
For Swift, the ultimate goal is to win a championship.
“This is the most talented our team has been in a very long time,” Swift said. “We want to win conference, win nationals and put CU on the map. Personally, I would love to win a tournament individually. Everything is done as a team, but they do give out individual awards at tournaments, and I want to win one this year. But the team always comes first to me. I would rather win with my friends than beat them to earn an individual award.”
The next competition for the men’s bowling team will be the Roto Grip Keystone Quaker Classic in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 18-19, and the women’s bowling team’s next competition will be the Storm Baker Challenge in Addison, Illinois, on Jan. 11-12.
