BATON ROUGE - In just two years, high school bowling’s version of its all-star match, the LHSCA’s All-District team showcase Saturday at All Star Lanes in Baton Rouge has certainly lived up to its billing.

The various distrIcts sent their top bowlers from around the state to bowl traditional and Baker games to set up a stepladder Baker best of five matches for the title. 

After two standard bowling games and a set of 10 Baker games, the top four seeds moved to the best of five stepladder.

In the first match, the Gonzales district girls first team defeated the Hammond Girls team, 3-2. The semifinals saw a local region showdown as the Gonzales girls defeated the Baton Rouge district team, 3-1. In the championship match against the District 6 team from New Orleans, the Gonzales bowlers won the title in the fifth and final game, 199-154, for a 3-2 win.

Bowling for the Gonzales teams were: Dutchtown – Jewel Boatner, Braylie Roulier and Addison Legendre; St. Amant – Brooke Hernandez and Ava James; and, East Ascension – Laela Aubin.

In the boy’s stepladder, the South Central boys district defeated District 3 in New Orleans, 3-2, before being swept in the semifinal match by New Orleans District 1, 3-0. The one seed was the Baton Rouge boys 5A District 5, but the New Orleans team rolled winning games of 234, 216 and 217 to win 3-1 for the title.

Representing that district from Baton Rouge/Gonzales were the following: East Ascension -- Anthony Authement, Royce Wheat; Prairieville -- Sammy Battaglia; St. Amant -- Chase Cagnolatti; Dutchtown – Justin Ohler; and, Denham Springs – Noah Fontenot

Several great moments during the event including the all-tournament honors based on scores from the first two games of traditional bowling. As we saw in the singles, there were some great scores during this portion of the event.

On the girl’s side, Albany’s Caroline Engeron averaged 235.5 to earn MVP honors with state singles champion, Ava Doucet of St. Joseph’s Academy at 429 followed by Addison Belle of Archbishop Chapelle (414), Carolynn Hill of Chapelle (405) and Taylor Bourdonnay of Chapelle (396).

The boy’s all-tournament group was led by Matthew St Germaine of Belle Chasse, the MVP averaging 255. Bryce Jackson of Central Lafourche (504) was second with Ben Gautreaux of Episcopal third (493) followed by Andrew Puszczewicz of John Curtis (492) and Noah Arceneaux (Vandebilt Catholic, 485).

Arceneaux had a 300 game as did Logan Nguyen of Patrick Taylor and then the South Central 5A squad rolled an impressive Baker 300 game as the five bowlers each completed their two frames in the game with nothing but strikes.

In the first event last year, 31 teams were represented. This past Saturday, 49 district teams took part, 35 in the Boys/Open division and 14 girl’s teams. All 7 regions of the state were represented and 26-of-30 potential districts were represented.

I admit that last year I was a little skeptical of this idea but I’m convinced now. Why not an all-star celebration of the best bowlers in the state in a competition format? In a format that is clearly understandable and would make a great finals format to stream or televise for the state team finals.

I would just say that bowling is the one sport where the format changes a lot when the television lights come on in NCAA, ITC, USBC, PBA and PWBA events. Nothing says it couldn’t happen in an LHSAA event either. It would make the streamed finals of the team events so much more understandable for the viewers.

Congrats to the folks at All Star for putting this together for a second straight year. Next week, we’ll look back at 10 weeks of CW PBA Bowling before CBS and CBSSN begins coverage of the World Series of Bowling which will look much different this year.

Back next Monday.

         Until then good luck and good bowling,

                                                 Kent Lowe