By Jackson Sepko
Hottytoddy.com intern
jsepko@go.olemiss.edu
A veteran team captain with college bowling aspirations and an eighth-grade phenom were named first team all-state by the Clarion-Ledger after helping the Commodores to the Class II state championship.
The Jackson Clarion-Ledger gave first team all-state honors to Lafayette junior Nick Cohen and eighth-grader Jakob Robertson.
According to the Clarion-Ledger, Cohen posted an average score of 191 on the season (the highest possible score is 300) and saved his best performance for last, bowling a 678 series score in the state championship match (a series is three matches of bowling; the highest possible score is a 900).
Lafayette head bowling coach Kelle Sumrall said Cohen has worked hard this past year to perfect his game.
Sumrall said Cohen is pursuing college bowling, an opportunity more widely available now than ever before.
“Now, many more colleges have taken on bowling, and there’s so many more opportunities for (college bowlers),” Sumrall said.
Forty-three NCAA institutions in Division I or II sponsor women’s bowling, but men’s bowling is not an NCAA-sponsored sport. However, according to scholarship resource website CollegeScholarships.org, there are ways for men to attain collegiate bowling scholarships.
According to the site, club teams at notable schools like Vanderbilt, Nebraska and Wichita State offer some talent-based scholarships for men’s bowling. Additionally, the United States Bowling Congress’ website states that it offers over $6 million in collegiate scholarship opportunities per year.
Should Cohen receive a scholarship to bowl collegiately, Sumrall says he will be a true asset to his team, citing “his maturity, his dedication to the sport (and) his leadership ability.”
“That just shows how mature he is for a high school guy and how he has set goals for himself and is making a way to achieve those goals,” she said.
While Cohen is looking toward continuing his bowling career in college, his fellow first team all-state honoree, Jakob Robertson, has yet to even arrive to high school.
Robertson, who will be a freshman next year, averaged a score of 214 this year with a season-high of 289 and put up a solid series score of 714 in the state championship match, per the Clarion-Ledger.
According to Sumrall, the atmosphere of positivity and desire for success has permeated beyond the bowling lanes thanks to the leadership of her team’s more senior members.
“My older guys — I’m not just speaking for Nick, (but also) for D.C. (Bumgardner) and Matthew (Atkinson) — are very respected in the classroom, they’re good students, (and) they’re just good overall kids,” she said.
The first-year head coach cited those veterans’ leadership as the key to establishing a championship culture around her program — a program she hopes to grow over the course of her tenure.
“Bowling hasn’t been a very big sport at Lafayette, and now I get emails and text messages all the time — ‘Hey, my son wants to join the bowling team,’ or ‘Hey, my daughter wants to join the bowling team’ — and I think with them kind of paving the way, we can build a pretty good sport that’s successful for a long time,” she said.
