The Neshaminy High School boys bowling team won the 2015 Pennsylvania High School State Bowling Championships in dramatic fashion at Dutch Lanes in Ephrata on a Saturday in March 2015.
In a final that came down to the last frames against top-seeded Hempfield, a clutch string of strikes by Neshaminy’s five bowlers won the deciding Baker game and the title. It was the first state bowling championship ever for a Neshaminy boys team.
“They get to go out on a high note”
“It’s real exciting,” said second-year Neshaminy coach Mark Dunfee. “The boys worked really hard. All my starters, the guys that threw today, they’re all seniors, so they get to go out on a high note.”
Seven Neshaminy bowlers brought the trophy home to Bucks County that night after a celebratory dinner at Shady Maple Smorgasbord in nearby East Earl. Two reserves contributed during the qualifying rounds.
How Baker games work
The championship rounds were bowled in the Baker format, in which the entire team acts as one bowler and each of the five members bowls two frames.
“It requires more than just one person being hot,” Dunfee said. “It requires the team to string together a really good performance for their scores to be high, which is exactly what they did.”
The road to the title
Hempfield topped the qualifying round with 4,290 pins, earning a bye to the finals. Neshaminy qualified second with 4,156.
Third-seeded Penn Manor beat Conrad Weiser to set up a semifinal against Neshaminy. After the teams split the first two games, Neshaminy won the third 237-215 to advance.
In the best-of-three final, Neshaminy took the first game 204-194. Hempfield answered with a string of strikes to win the second by 30 pins, 227-197, while Neshaminy struggled with missed spares.
The third game decided it, and Neshaminy finished with strikes.
“Everybody threw a strike on their last ball, and we needed it,” Dunfee said. “We would have lost otherwise.” Neshaminy won 235-223.
Credit to Hempfield
Dunfee praised the Lancaster County runner-up, which had finished second in the state three years running.
“That other team was fantastic, all credit to them,” he said. “They came out and threw three great games. It took everything we had to beat them.”
Individual standouts
In qualifying, Neshaminy’s regional champion, a two-handed bowler, rolled the second-highest game and series of the boys field, a 258 and a 671. The team’s newly crowned state boys singles champion, who had won the individual title the day before in a roll-off, added a 651 series.
“We had one goal going into this season and we accomplished that goal,” one senior said.
Members of the girls team from rival Pennsbury, which also won the state team title that day, congratulated the Neshaminy boys after the finals, giving Bucks County a sweep of the team championships.
Lancaster County hosts the best
Dutch Lanes in Ephrata hosted the state high school championships, drawing teams and families from across Pennsylvania to northern Lancaster County. Local programs, including Hempfield, Penn Manor and Warwick, have made the county one of the strongest high school bowling regions in the state. A Warwick sophomore placed 11th in the boys singles event the same weekend.
A state title in context
State bowling championships bring together the top teams from across Pennsylvania, and the competition is usually decided over several games, where a single bad frame can cost a team dearly. Winning a first title is a milestone any program remembers.
For the champions, the memory of that final frame will last a lifetime.
This article was originally published in March 2015.