A few days removed from their first victory of the season, the FHC boys bowling team met up with a legitimate contender to win a state championship this year. 

In their first matchup against the Greenville Yellow Jackets this season on February 17th, Greenville out-bowled FHC in every facet of the game and distinguished themselves as one of the more dangerous teams in West Michigan with a commanding win, 28.5 to 1.5. 

This time around, the strikesmen of FHC knew what they were signing up for, so head coach Terry Metzner and his team thought the odds were in their favor.

“Obviously, it’s always nice to play a team like Greenville another time around during the season,” coach Metzner said. “We know them, and they know us, so there usually aren’t any surprises.”

Early on in the match, FHC successfully hung on for dear life, as they won the first baker game outright by a score of 214 to 86. Drawing an Uno Flip Card on FHC, Greenville put FHC’s baker games effort to waste, mounting a comeback in the individual games to win eight out the ten games. 

“It really came down to not picking up our spares,” senior David Whittaker said, “and Greenville has a bunch of players who can easily score over 200 every match.” 

Like David eluded to, Greenville possesses players left and right who can bowl a score over 200 points in their sleep. Normally, sophomore Peyton Price’s 210 and senior Tommie Payne’s 208 would be plenty of points to squeeze out a win; however, Greenville is Greenville, and they’re a pain to play against. Greenville’s deep roster of 200-point bowlers was too much heat for FHC to handle on Monday, and the strikesmen of FHC dropped a deceptively-close one, 24-6. 

On the other end of Jacket Lanes, the FHC girls bowling team stuck to their mantra of “development is key” and “there are better performances to come” in their unfortunate 30-0 crumble to the Yellow Jackets. Freshman Skyler Tierney, though, shined in the midst of the blowout by notching a season-high score of 137.

“Even though we lost by a good margin, I felt pretty confident about my score,” Skyler explained, “but we lost, so it doesn’t feel as fulfilling as a good performance in a win would feel.”

Coach Metzner and his loyal bowlers can check off the 2020-2021 regular season on their checklist and throw it in the trash because regionals kick off on Friday, March 19th. At regionals, their disappointing year of late game slip-ups, small but costly mistakes, and endless losses really don’t matter if they can find a way to compete neck and neck with the elite teams on the West Michigan bowling scene.

“I have to choose six boys and five girls to come along with me to Regionals on Friday,” coach Metzner said. “I expect our boys and girls to be ready to go up against the best teams in this region.”