First Posted: 4/1/2015
In most seasons the end of the year banquet for the West Ohio High School Bowling Conference has been loaded with members of the PBA tour. This season the PBA schedule got in the way — and you know what — it simply opened up the door for even greater focus to be placed on the youth and families of the conference.
It was a great day!
The OHSAA champions from Coldwater and Wapakoneta were honored but Coldwater coach and conference boss Rick Hartings made sure that any number of conference student athletes received the attention that they deserved.
Paige Hartings of Coldwater gained Bowler of the Year standing for the girls side of the ledger in what had to be a real close statistical battle with Britni Hosterman who long ago earned what would have been my Most Valuable Bowler honor for how she led her Wapak teammates through first the sectional and then district titles on the way to state honors.
Brandon Kennard dominated in average throughout the season and led the well-balanced Redskins to state play where they fell just short of repeating their state championship from the year before.
The conference has always stressed academics and Sunday was another example of this as 11 of the conference student athletes were honored. Blake Spangler of the state champion Coldwater squad and Amanda Stachler of Parkway received the Joe Remaklus Scholarships, which annually are rewarded to the senior boy and girl who have the best combined bowling average and GPA.
The conference also benefits from a great golf outing with PBA stars that leads to scholarships based on the theme of “What bowling has done for me and my plans for the future!”
Kira Irick, Chelsey Boroff, Shannon Osterfeld, Jackie Bruns, Quincy Warren, Nick Colby, Alan Albers, Cody Springer, Spangler and Tyler Rueger were honored for excellence at the banquet.
The honors continued as approximately 650 parents and fans of the conference looked on.
Kennard was joined by his teammate Blake Knueve on the All Conference first team. The group that joined the two of them could easily handle any other conference first team. James Riepenhoff from Lima Central Catholic who had not only the high two game set of the conference but also a pair of 279 games earned his spot on the team as did Spangler and Tyler Wenning of Coldwater, Zach Marchal and Alex Groff of state semifinalist Versailles and Trey Buehler of St. Henry.
On the girls’ side of things, a squad was honored that any conference would love to watch week in and week out.
The two dynamic sophomores Hartings and Hosterman led the way of the very loaded squad. Stachler of Parkway had to be near the top of the stat chart as well. The trio was joined by Osterfeld of Coldwater (who was the top bowler in both sectional and district action) as well as Warren from Mississinawa Valley, Irick of New Bremen and Hannah Niekamp and Megan Ward of Versailles.
It was a great end to a great season with conference boss Hartings offering that there may be expansion next season as teams are angling to join the conference. We will touch on this some Sunday and then again as things move forward. We will also check on some young ones who have rolled well after the close of the season.
