Wauseon boys bowling and its strong foundation of returning letter winners should help them make improvements this season.
Returning for the Indians are juniors Parker Black, Ryan Marks and Kage Little. They also will have newcomers Josh Freestone, Landon Gleckler, Clayton Hilton, Isaiah Luce, Riley Morr and Kane Panico.
“We have a good core group of letter winners with experience who have a will to be better than last year. They practice hard and want to lead by example,” said head coach Kody Moden of the Wauseon boys.
The Indians will look to replace Ben Allan, Aidan Teal, and Brayden Everly. To recoup some of that production, Moden will rely on his younger bowlers.
“Even with the experience of my letter winners we have a lot of first time bowlers,” said the Wauseon coach. “They show promise with the little practice we have had so far so they may take some lumps the first part of the season but they have the ability to get better quickly with some hard work put in.”
Moden is encouraged by what he’s seen so far from his squad in practice.
“We have three returning letter winners from last year that are ready to redeem themselves from what they felt was a disappointing season last year,” he said. “They are hard at work improving their game and looking forward to getting out and proving they can be contenders in the league this year. We have several new bowlers that are showing good promise early in this season’s practice. It’s always hard to tell if we can turn that into wins until you are actually in the heat of competition but I look forward to seeing them improve throughout the season. I think we should be right in the middle of the pack for league this year, but if the new players can improve quickly we should be competitive and you just never know what surprises you can have with hard work.”
The Northwest Ohio Athletic League race looks to be a dogfight in 2021-22. At the top, Moden sees three teams that will factor into who ultimately claims the league crown.
“There were a lot of the top bowlers (that) graduated last year but the underclassmen were the story. I look for Liberty Center to be the team to beat at the top this year with the young players from last year and the experience they got last year. Bryan is always a team that seems to be able to reload year after year. Patrick Henry lost some good players but also had some good underclassmen that will be ready for the challenge,” he said.
Wauseon welcomes Tinora to River City Bowl-A-Way for the season opening match on Monday, Nov. 29 at 4 p.m.
Reach Max Householder at 419-335-2010.
