Bowling team off and rolling

The Mount Vernon Nazarene University athletic department launched the bowling program in January 2018 as a club sport to help create new opportunities for prospective students.

The addition of bowling was a way that MVNU wanted to try to help increase student enrollment and give high schoolers a chance to continue their athletic career after high school. Bowling is one of many sports the athletic department added to the collegiate athletic experience on campus.

Other sports MVNU has added are: competitive cheerleading, men’s lacrosse, men’s volleyball and E-sports.

The men’s and women’s bowling programs are led by first-year coach Ron Garlinger, who is assisted by his daughter, Amber Brubaker. Coach Garlinger comes from Highland, were he coached there 14 years prior to coming to MVNU.

The team consists of nine males and eight females. On the current roster, the team has only one senior on both sides, and that is Elijah Arns. The inaugural meet for both teams was at the Halo Classic hosted by Siena Heights on Sept. 29. At that meet, Madi Sherer and Dana Hicks were the leading bowlers for MVNU.

Trevor Monk is part of the men’s bowling team, and he says there are growing pains for a brand-new program.

“It’s a learning experience. We’re a very young team with very little high school experience” Monk said.

The team practices are held at Colonial in Mount Vernon. In bowling, the team has two different formats, which are Baker games and team games. A Baker game is where five members of the team will bowl two frames. An example is a bowler will bowl frames one and six, and the most consistent bowler will bowl frames five and 10 because there is an opportunity to get three strikes. A team game is complete with the added score of all the bowlers.

The team recently competed Feb. 2 at Norse Collegiate Classic at Northern Kentucky, where they played five team games and 12 Baker games.