Bowlers dominate lane to lane

Starting boys bowling team at districts

Logan Foss, Guest Writer

The 2022-2023 school year marked the first year of bowling becoming an official Pinellas County high school sport. Before this, bowling was considered a club team. As a club team, the bowling team was the #2 team in the league in 2022, and when it became a sport, the team was ready to roll to districts.

The team had no changes since the 2020-2021 school year, so everyone on the varsity team had already bowled together. The varsity team was an 8-man team consisting of 5 starters and 3 substitutes. During the preseason match, Jaiden Skiers (11th) was named captain. Logan Foss (12th) mentioned, “Jaiden and I were the choices for captain, when Jaiden was the choice, I was ok with it because he asked me and coach anytime, he needed advice”.

The bowling team went on a hot streak, going undefeated during the regular season until they faced their biggest rival, Pinellas Park. In bowling, Pinellas Park and Osceola are always the top 2 teams in league. The undefeated season ended but the team still won 2 points from Pinellas Park. Out of 42 points to win during the season, the team won 37 points which was 2nd most in the league. Going into the PCAC the team won the remainder of the games after the P-Park loss. Leaving the battle for PCAC champion it was Osceola and Pinellas Park. Sadly, the team came up short as runner-up, the positive though was the team still had districts. At districts, a combined 35 teams from Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco County competed. How it works was the team would bowl 3 games to attempt to qualify for the top 4 then the 4 teams then bowl in seed play for states. The 2 teams that win go to states. After the 3 games, Osceola finished in the top 3 and became the 3rd seed. Osceola fought hard and finished 4th in districts.