PHOTO COURTESY OF A-STATE ATHLETICS

After an early end to last season, the Arkansas State bowling team will go into the 2025-26 season with experience and a new hope to finally bring a championship to Jonesboro.

The 2024-25 campaign ended in disappointment. After making the NCAA championship three years in a row, the Red Wolves lost two matches against underdog Maryville to be sent home early. The Red Wolves ended the season with an 80-41 record, which was coach Justin Kostick’s worst record since 2021-22, when the team went 72-37. The bowling team has made a few changes to the staff since then.

“We’ve made some adjustments to the coaching staff, and we’ve hired a mental performance as well,” Kostick said. “We needed to self-evaluate some of what went on and make some adjustments on the equipment side of stuff and just get back to work with some adjustments on how we train.”

The bowling team made a change at assistant coach with the hiring of Mike Conn. Conn spent the last three seasons with the Savannah College of Art and Design men’s and women’s bowling team. During this time, the Bees’ men’s team won their conference, and the women’s team won back-to-back NAIA national championships.

“Mike is an elite ball driller, and he’s very good at fitting, he knows how to drill the balls to do certain things,” Kostick said, once again referencing some equipment adjustments taken. “Mike’s also coached women before. At the NAIA level they have men’s bowling, and so he was not the overall head coach but the overall head coach at SCAD ran the men’s program and Conn ran the women’s program. So he was essentially the head coach of the women’s team.”

Unlike last season, there will only be one freshman for this season. The team will be far more experienced than last year. 

“We were a bit of a young team last year,” senior bowler Kaili VanDuinen said. “So this year with the freshman having a year of experience and just knowing what to expect, I think that everything will be good this season.”

Kostick said that he thinks that the experience and lack of youth will be a boon to the bowling season. 

“We’re bringing everyone back except for one person, and we still have some people who played for the national championship on TV, so that’s a good thing to have,” Kostick said. ”When you have a very experience-laden team, that definitely helps you compete so hopefully that gets us off to a good start.”

The bowling team returns almost all of their leading bowlers this season. 

VanDuinen and senior Kaylee Back are the current leaders in games played. Back had the highest single game score last season with 279. Other leading scorers returning include sophomore Amanda Lang, who knocked 6,195 pins as a freshman and got 276 in a single game. Senior Maggie Thoma will return after getting 7,379 pins last season.

The Red Wolves will face fierce competition this season. The National Tenpin Coaches Association gave A-State the sixth spot in the preseason top 25. The top 5 in the rankings are all in Conference USA with the Red Wolves.

Arkansas State will begin their search for a national championship on October 17 at the Penguin Classic hosted by Youngstown State. Kostick said that he is positive about the chances of a championship.

“It’s going to take a lot of togetherness and making sure our confidence level is good,” Kostick said. “It’s very possible to win the national championship. You got to have things go your way, too and have some luck factor into it. But you make your own luck too, so you got to go out there and perform and put in the work and the effort. I think if you do those things with the skill that we have, then good things will happen.”

Categories: Sports