BATON ROUGE - High school bowling enters its final 10 days of regular season play and a couple of wins will cement some teams’ spots in the three 16-team brackets.

In the Class 5A Division I, Captain Shreve of Shreveport has moved to No. 1 at 9-0. Again, you have to try to understand that the power rankings have some issues that lead to false seedings especially in areas where teams don’t compete out of their region and that has happened before with the Northwest Louisiana schools.

What you need to look at is Jesuit of New Orleans (7-0) and Brother Martin (9-0) right now at 2 and 3. If the rankings don’t change in the next two weeks, you are looking at two of the favorites on the same side of the bracket.

Locally, East Ascension (8-0) is number six with Catholic (8-1) one spot behind. Dutchtown (8-2) is No. 12 with defending champs Denham Springs (7-2) No.13 and St. Amant (6-2) at No. 14.

In Division II boys, favored Archbishop Shaw (9-0) is second with University High, undefeated at 9-0, third.  Madison Prep (8-1) is No. 8 and St. Michael the Archangel is 16th at 5-4. A couple more wins will be crucial for the Warriors to get into the 16-team bracket.

On the girls’ side, it’s the two favorites Dutchtown (7-0) and Denham Springs (8-0) at one and two. Dutchtown is the two-time defending champs and Denham Springs won it in 2022. St. Amant is No. 12 with a 5-2 record and St. Joseph’s is 7-3 and No. 13. Again, a couple of wins for those teams will help clinch their playoff spots.

As mentioned, 10 days left with the season concluding on March 20. The seedings and brackets will be announced on March 24th and the first day of playoff competition is March 31.

USBC OPEN UPDATE

I was curious going into this year how the scoring pace would be because frankly in 2005 and 2012 there were some good scores but it wasn’t very consistent scoring. I even had a tournament official tell me the pattern in 2012 wasn’t the best for a new buildout of lanes.

But in the early going at Raising Canes River Center, there have been some pretty good moments which gives hope for possible high scoring to come.

Austin Jahnke of Vadnais Heights, Minnesota had the first over 700 series in singles with a 741. The lefthander had games of 266, 247 and 228 to get to the top in Regular Singles. His nine-game all-events total was 1,931.

With the oil pattern on the lanes not publicly released, bowlers can get a feel for them at All Star Lanes where the Bowlers Journal event is bowled on the doubles and singles pattern.

“I bowled the Bowlers Journal on Thursday and it went absolutely terrible,” Jahnke told the USBC. “But, after that we came over (to the River Center) and did a little scouting. We watched Mika’s group (Hall of Famer Mika Koivuniemi) and I started watching Chris Sand throw the ball. He throws it similar to the way I do, so I started formulating a game plan around that.”

Sand (also a lefty) and Koivuniemi took the early double lead with a 1,369 total. Sam Carter of Ben Lomond, California had sets of 668, 642 and 693 for the first 2,000 all-events of the tourney at 2,003 (222.5 average)

Over at All Star the scores have been good at the Bowlers Journal event with Jon Rakoski of Estero, Florida throwing an amazing 842 set as the 53-year-old put together games of 264-279-299 in his second set of the day to lead in senior singles.

He teamed with Justin Veitch of Kenner, Louisiana for a leading open doubles total of 1,475. Rakoski in senior doubles teamed with Bill Nichols of Bella Vista, Arkansas for a 1,509. Nichols a day later would have the first 300 of that tournament.

Randy Mewes of New Richmond, Wisconsin also had a 300 game during the first week at All Star.

At The BTM event which is also at All Star, there has already been a 30 Clean spot claimed by Nick Usie. That means no open frames in any of the three games of the tournament. In the last BTM in 2023, seven bowlers split the clean 30 jackpot for $350 each.

FINAL THOUGHTS

PBA bowling is back on TV starting this coming weekend for several evenings starting with the Nevada Classic at 5 p.m. on Saturday on FS1. Shows are also set for March 16 (7 p.m.), March 17, 18 and 19 (6 p.m.) also on FS1. The World Championship will be decided on March 22 on FOX Sports.

              Until next Monday, good luck and good bowling,

                                                                            Kent Lowe