By Matt Browning
The Salina South bowling program – both boys and girls teams – have had a tremendous run of success since 2020.
The girls program has made it state for the past six years, including a state title in 2020 and a second place finish in 2023. The boys program’s highest finish was in 2020 and have placed at state in four of the past six years.
“The goal is always to make it to state and bring home hardware,” said Salina South coach Seth White. “Our guys will be young this year, which as a coach I always see as an advantage, because they don’t have the looming expectation of being “good”. Our girls lost two of the top bowlers in state last year with Callie Vargas (5A State Champ), and Rylee Lambeth (2023 5A State Champ). But we will be pretty balanced from our one through six bowlers which was something we lacked last year.”
The Cougars bring back four of six on the boys side and three bowlers on the girls side – both teams have the talent to be in the thick of the 5A title mix.
“Even though our boys are returning four of the six varsity spots from last year, they are still pretty young,” White said. “Which I talked on earlier will be an advantage. I’ve found that our younger bowlers don’t hold themselves to as high standards as some of the seniors who know what they are capable of, but will stumble on occasions. On our girls side we will be looking for that vocal leader that will step up like we had Rylee Lambeth 2022-2025 last year, Avianna Ordonez 2020-2023 (3rd place 5A individual in 2022), and Lauren Lust 2016-2019 (2018 5A-1A State Champ).”
