The Bowling Club at Wayne State College has doubled in size since last year and is improving their skills by competing competitively for the second year in row.

The Bowling Club has grown in numbers in both men and women, for a combined total of 18 members. This year, the women have added more players to make their own team.

“We had three girls by the end last year,” President Sam Wesely said. “This year we have 6 total girls.”

In the past, the team had to have a co-ed team, but now there are enough girls to have both a men’s and women’s team. Most of the girls are rookies, so they will get a lot of experience in the upcoming tournaments they participate in.

“There’s only six of them, so they are going to learn real fast, grow real quick,” said Joseph Lovercheck, former president of the Bowling Club.

The club participates in tournaments in the area through February. They practice twice a week to prepare for the tournaments.

“One [tournament] is in Lincoln, two of them are in Hastings, and there’s one in Sioux City,” Wesely said.

The Bowling Club is one of the few teams that participates at the collegiate level that is not funded by the college. They sell t-shirts to raise money to fund staying in hotels and buying equipment for the year.

“We are a club, so we go to Student Senate every year and get allocation money,” Lovercheck said. “Our jersey and tournament fees pretty much wipe out our allocation fund, so we are hoping to continue to get more.”

This is only the second year that the club has participated at the collegiate level. The long term goal would be to become an actual sports team at WSC.

“Last year was the first time we went to the actual tournaments that I was talking about,” Wesely said. “And then, this year, I’m trying to help us just become more of a force in those tournaments instead of just being there.”

Although experience is preferred, the club encourages all skill levels to join. Coaches and experienced players will help participants get to where they want to be to meet their goal.

“Our team is growing to the point where we are going to have to start doing tryouts,” Wesely said. “This year I’m trying not to do it, we have enough people where we kind of have a nice fill of all our rosters, but next year if we grow like we did this year we are going to have to do something like that just because we can’t have that many people.”

The Bowling Club at WSC has rapidly grown so that the men and women can have their own teams to compete against other collegiate level teams.