New GBN Team Already A Powerhouse At the Lanes

After bowling competitively in local leagues as kids, Jake Townsend and Ryan Salzman wanted to put on the green and gold and compete as Spartans when they entered high school.

At the time, didn’t have a bowling program—but that was no problem for Townsend and Salzman.

It took some collaborating, some patience, some promotion and most importantly people wanting to be involved, but two years later Glenbrook North bowling is a reality and still growing. The school has varsity and junior varsity squads for both boys and girls now and competes as an Illinois High School Association registered team for the first time this year.

“It’s been a huge success starting when I was a freshman and in two years coming all the way to this,” Townsend said. “It’s been exciting.”

The ball got rolling, so to speak, when current boys coach and GBN broadcast teacher Todd Rubin mentioned in class that he used to bowl competitively. Townsend and Salzman, who both bowled together on a travel team at Arlington Lanes, approached him about starting up something at the school and they immediately had Rubin’s support.

Rubin got them in touch with Chris Han and Jack Weinstein, juniors at the time who had also presented the idea to Rubin. The four collaborated mostly through Facebook and created a petition to start an intramural league. The result was a once a week league that lasted four weeks in the spring of 2010.

About 30 kids participated, and after it was over, most of them wanted more competition, according to Rubin. So he talked to the school’s athletic director, John Catalano, about getting a team for the following school year.

“(Catalano) said, “Show me for a full year that you guys can maintain sort of a team-type atmosphere and let’s see how many kids come out for a tryout,’” Rubin recalled.

Posters and announcements at the school helped get the word out along with commercials made in Rubin’s broadcasting class to be aired on GBN-TV. Last winter, 62 kids came out for the league and 39 tried out, much more than anticipated.

“People around the school have been telling me they were shocked there were cuts because we had so many people,” Townsend said.

At the end of the season, the girls team played two matches and the boys three to make their debuts. Their image at school was helped in part because of the number of seniors on the boys team, including Han and Weinstein, Rubin said.

Entering this year, the athletic department rewarded the program’s numbers by providing transportation, taking care of the schedule and registering the teams in the IHSA, which means both teams will compete in sectionals with the chance to make state. The boys have 16 matches and tournaments, not including the playoffs, and the girls have 10. Following a full season under the IHSA, GBN bowling will be eligible to join a conference next year.

Rubin said the teams’ numbers continue to be healthy this year. Right now, the girls’ squad counts 10 on its roster, enough for a full varsity and junior varsity team, but without any backups. (Bowling matches feature five-person teams.) The boys have 12.

“I’m not too worried anymore about enough people showing up,” Rubin said. “You don’t need a tremendous amount for bowling—12 to 14 is enough.” 

While participants are no longer a problem, the current issue is funding for the program. As with Glenbrook North’s golf teams, each member of the bowling team has to pay an activities fee of $200 to pay for lanes and the team shirts.

Further down the line, both teams want to win and the experience and ability level of the players on the team varies greatly, according to Rubin. Some of the bowlers come in with little prior experience. Others, like Townsend, Salzman and freshman Corey Kahen, were already competitive bowlers.

Kahen got serious about bowling in sixth grade and has competed in the national United States Bowling Congress’ Junior Gold qualifying tournaments. He showed his skill by taking third in Vernon Hills’ 26-team Cougar Invitational on Dec. 3 by averaging 227 over six games, the kind of score that could qualify him for state. The Spartans took a respectable 14th at the tournament.

“We’re getting recognized as a team,” Kahen said. “We’re matching ourselves up, when we go to tournaments, with some of the best teams in the state.”

The Spartan boys don’t have the ambitions of a new team. They all are hoping to get to state.

“I think that’s certainly our goal,” Rubin said. “Even though we’re new I don’t think it’s unrealistic, especially considering we have no seniors so even if we don’t do it this year we want to look towards next year."

On the girls side, it’s not just the team that is new. While Rubin coaches boys golf at Evanston and baseball at Deerfield, girls coach Ana Peso is new to coaching altogether.

“I like to bowl, but I’ve never actually helped others so I’m working as well on how to work with the needs and interacting with the other coaches and how practices are,” Peso said.

“And driving the bus,” she added, with a laugh.

For now each team has just one coach, but they hope to add assistants to be able to allow for more individual coaching as opposed to the current ‘team manager,’ role as Rubin called it.

“Being that this is the first year that this is officially a sport we’re all kind of learning and experiencing this together for the first time,” said Sarah Flamm, one of two seniors on the girls team. “Overall we just have a lot of fun with it.”

The Spartans share Brunswick Zone Deerfield with teams from Deerfield and Chicagoland Jewish high schools. After having matches and practices last week they are on holiday break and will return to action in January. The boys team next faces St. Patrick on Jan. 11, while the girls will take on Stevenson Jan. 19. Both matches are at Brunswick Zone.