Girls Bowling: Lockport endures a lot to win national championship

A group of girls from the Lockport area bowling well is no surprise.

After all, Lockport Township High School is the most recent IHSA girls state bowling champion, winning the title in February of 2020. It was the Porters fifth state title and eighth trophy overall.

But what happened this past summer for the Porters was out of a movie.

The team entered a national tournament. Since Lockport was the most recent IHSA champion in 2020 and won the “unofficial” state championship this past season, the team qualified.

The thing was that their lineup changed, they couldn’t enter as the Lockport Porters, and their coach couldn’t coach them. So they had to get a coach who had never met any of the girls until the day before the tournament. The first practice was a disaster, and oh yeah, there was a tornado.

And in the end, there was something else: a national championship.

Yes, there were all sorts of twists and turns. But in the end, the group of girls from the Lockport area won the 2021 U.S. High School Bowling National Championship, which was held June 19-20 at Poelking South Lanes in Dayton, Ohio.

“It’s super awesome,” 2021 Lockport graduate and team member Payton Vandenburg said.

On Saturday night, Dec. 11, the team received their national championship rings. Appropriately they did so at Strike ‘N Spare ll bowling alley in Lockport. That’s because the lanes factored into their name.

“I was crying, of course,” Lockport girls bowling coach Lynda Siezega said of winning the national title. “I was so proud.”

She certainly should be, especially since team member Chloe Siezega is her daughter and there was one last high school moment of glory with the two.

But it was a rocky road to make it all happen. First off, some team members couldn’t make it that weekend, so others stepped in for them. Then Lynda Siezega couldn’t be the coach of the team. Plus, they couldn’t bowl as the Lockport Porters.

“The IHSA rules say that in an out-of-state tournament over the summer, that we, as the high school coaches, can’t coach,” Lynda Siezega said. “Also, because we had graduated seniors (Siezega and Vandenburg) on the team, we couldn’t bowl as the high school. A couple of other states had the same issue.”

So the group had to use a different name and they became the SNS Boats.

“We did SNS for our home lanes at Strike N’ Spare,” coach Siezega said. “Then we called ourselves the boats because that was close to a Porter (who used to guide the boats through the locks).”

So all the Boats had to do was get a coach. Fortunately, because Chloe Siezega is now attending school and bowling there, they had connections at Judson University. Don Anderson, who was in his first season as associate head bowling coach at Judson, was able to step in and coach the team.

“I was on my lunch break and going through a Portillo’s drive-through when I got the call from Lynda,” Anderson said. “We were on the phone for 45 minutes and that was our first conversation.

“At first I wasn’t sure. But something told me I needed to do this.”

So he did. But when the six-member squad of seniors Caitlin Bosko and Demi Kontos, with juniors Morgan LiCausi and Abby Miller, along with Siezega and Vandenburg got to Dayton, they had never met Anderson.

They also had something else to deal with that Friday. A tornado warning.

“Driving there a weird sensation came over me,” coach Siezega said. “I wasn’t sure what to make of it but it was a calmness. Then, on Friday, there was a tornado warning when we all met at the hotel. At first, we had a disastrous practice.”

Thankfully, the tornado wasn’t too bad. But it appeared to be a bad omen at first for the Boats.

“Kind of yes,” Chloe Siezega said of the tornado being a bad sign. “Our practice didn’t go well so the tornado just added to it.”

It sure did but everyone was safe through it.

“My parents were driving there and had to stop because of the tornado,” Vandenburg said of her parents, Jeff and Stacy. Plus, Don (Anderson) was driving and actually saw it. So he had to stop too. We (the team) were all in the hotel and we had to go to the lobby. Some of the girls were freaking out.”

But it was like everything was calm, cool and collected on Saturday.

“I was nervous,” Lynda Siezega admitted. “I wasn’t completely out of the loop as a coach and a parent but I had to stay in the background and just stand there. But the girls all trusted (Anderson) and believed in what he said. It was incredible, amazing.

“The girls just all came together and bonded. We all calmed down and I knew we had a chance. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Her daughter agreed.

“That was the first time I met Don in person,” Chloe Siezega said of Anderson. “I think it was just that we talked and got to know him and how he approached things. We had a plan going in and we all worked together. We helped him help us.”

Most of the tourney was done in a Baker Game format. That’s where each player bowls a frame and the team score is added up that way. There were also three regular games in the qualifying rounds and the Boats made it through that in third place out of the 22 teams.

A dozen teams were in the next round and that was narrowed down to eight teams as the Boats were second in that round.

In the quarterfinal round, the Boats were still second. So they advanced to the semifinal round and outlasted two other teams from Illinois in the three Baker games. One of them was their rival, Harlem, which was bowling as the Forest Hill (its home lanes) Huskies. SNS had a 577, while Forest Hill (493) and the Viking Lanes Indians (484), which was the team from Hononegah Community High School in Rockton.

“I liked it,” Chloe Siezega said of the Baker format. “There’s still pressure on you but it eases because you only bowl two frames.”

Vandenburg, who is currently bowling in college at Bethel University in McKenzie, Tennessee, agreed.

“Oh, I loved the Baker format,” she said. “That way you work as a team and no one works as an individual. You just try to better the team.”

The team being the Boats was different too, but Vandenburg approved of the name.

“It seemed very surreal and weird but I liked it,” she said of the name and the weekend. “We didn’t go in there thinking it would happen. It was just super insane. We didn’t have our coach and being an assistant coach my dad couldn’t do it either. We were fortunate to find someone (in Anderson) who could help us out.”

In the final, the Boats jumped out to a big lead over the team that had been in first place all tourney long. That was the Sun Prairie High School Cardinals, who were from Wisconsin.

The Boats had games of 177, 215, and 169 for a 561 total. The Cardinals had 138, 173, and then tried to rally with a 226 game for a 537 total. But it was too little, too late as the Boats won by 24 pins.

“The girls just rocked it,” Lynda Siezega said. “They averaged a 190 for the tournament and that’s unheard of. (Sun Prairie) had a bye but what helped us was that there was fresh oil on the lanes. We did very well and there were only good vibes.

“Everyone bowled great but Demi Kontos was amazing and unstoppable. She had 21 out of 24 frames as strikes. The girls just wanted it so badly and with their adrenaline, there was no stopping them.”

Coach Siezega was also impressed with the sportsmanship shown in the tourney. Especially from the Huskies. Although Machesney Park is nearly 100 miles away, Harlem and Lockport have developed quite a rivalry in girls bowling. Harlem has seven official state titles and the Porters have five.

Because of COVID there was no IHSA State Tournament this February. But in the unofficial State Tournament, which was held on Sunday, Feb. 28 at Forest Hills Lanes (the Huskies home lanes) Lockport won the title 5,963-5,910 over Harlem.

“The Harlem girls got third (at Nationals) and they stayed to cheer us on,” Lynda Siezega said. “They were like, ‘lets keep it (the title) in Illinois.’ Then they took pictures with us afterward. It was really cool.”

What was even cooler was winning the National Championship.

“It was the third game and I don’t like to look at the scores,” Chloe Siezega said. “But Don (Anderson) asked me if it was OK if Caitlin (Bosko) bowled at the end. I said ‘sure’ and that’s when I figured we had won.”

Vandenburg wasn’t watching the scores either.

“We didn’t know we won,” she said. “We were just out there bowling well and making the best of it. But nothing was going to stop us. This is the best way to go out.”

The girls and coaches all got their National Championship rings on Dec. 11 to commemorate the unforgettable experience. There the coaches, including longtime Lockport assistant Andy McCormick, told the story of how it happened and there were many emotions and hugs.

“I always wanted to win a national championship,” said Anderson, who is an accomplished bowler and bowled at Wichita State University “I just never thought I’d do it with a bunch of high school girls that I had never met.”

It’s something everyone involved will always remember.

“I thought winning State was great,” Lynda Siezega said. “But winning Nationals is priceless. We will never forget it.”