WATERFORD — For Dearborn Divine Child, the key to winning a state bowling championship was simply a matter of getting in the right frame of mind.
“Last year we were rated as high as third and finished 12th or 13th, and our kids were so nervous and frustrated with themselves,” coach Nick Ploucha said. “This year, it was more like, ‘Let’s just go and see what we can do.’”
The Falcons didn’t even expect to have a season for four weeks, Ploucha said.
“We were thankful and blessed to play every match we could. We were really fortunate we didn’t have to quarantine. We were going to let everything shake out the way it was going to, and we were going to enjoy just being in the moment,” he said.
With that refreshed approach, the Falcon boys squad captured its first state championship, winning the Division 2 tournament last weekend at Century Bowl in Waterford. It took a come-from-behind victory over Chelsea to get the job done.
Divine Child advanced from the morning session into match play, defeating Grand Rapids Kenowa Hills 1,280-1,252 in the quarterfinal round and squeezing by Tecumseh by three pins (1,385-1,382) to qualify for the final match.
One problem, though: Chelsea was on a roll, upsetting top-ranked and defending champion Jackson Northwest in its semifinal. The Bulldogs also jumped out to a quick 74-point lead after the Baker games, meaning Divine Child had to step up if it were to have any chance at victory.
“Our mindset was really to just chip away. You’ve got 10 frames. It’s like going down six in the first inning of a baseball game. We knew if we got a couple of strikes we would put the pressure on them,” Ploucha said. “We were making spares. We got some stuff coming off the back apron that helped us. You could see our kids gaining confidence and picking up steam, just like a train.”
Three out of the five Falcon bowlers had 200 games when it mattered most: sophomore Andrew Carl rolled 231, junior Paul Scheuher had 226 and senior Noell Jackson had 210. Combined with a 181 from senior Adam Thompson and a 174 from senior Shane Green, the sum of 1,022 exceeded Chelsea’s 900 and was good enough to push Divine Child up to the top. They prevailed on a total pinfall of 1,358-1,310.
It all came back to a change in attitude.
“We met as a team the day before and talked about what our favorite memories were from the past four years,” Ploucha said. Those included qualifying for the regionals, a 300 game from Jackson, and competing for junior Samantha Harrison, a member of Divine Child’s girls team who’s receiving chemotherapy for acute lymphoblastic lymphoma.
The team also makes a habit of praying before every match.
“It’s pretty awesome,” Ploucha said. “It’s amazing to be able to show our faith as a Catholic school, and then we bowl. It kind of sets the tone a little bit and gets us looser. We were thrilled to be able to do that on a daily basis.”
As a result, Ploucha said his team was “really, really loose” throughout the high-stakes competition.
“Very rarely can you play a sport and eat French fries and drink soda and still have a good time,” he said. “One of our kids missed a spare and the rest of the kids started booing, in a good-natured way. Another one of our bowlers threw the ball directly in the gutter — I don’t even think it went on the lane — and our kids clapped, and we moved on.”
Divine Child didn’t even have a bowling team six years ago when a transfer student, Sam Schueher (Paul’s brother), approached Ploucha and begged him to re-start the program. It’s picked up steam since then, winning the past three consecutive Catholic League titles. Still, the state finals are another level entirely.
“I knew that we were capable of qualifying for the state tournament, to qualify in the top eight and move on to the tournament rounds,” said Ploucha, a health and physical education teacher at the high school. “To be honest, I thought we were one person short. We were trying to ask a senior who was a JV bowler for us last year and to ask a freshman who was a little wet behind the ears to be that fifth bowler, but they were capable.”
If there was a downer to the day, it was Divine Child’s attempt at a post-match victory celebration.
“The crummy part, I guess, was that we tried to celebrate as a team; we went out to a restaurant and the restaurant couldn’t take us because of COVID, so we ended up just going home,” he said.
However, Jackson was back the next day, participating in the individual finals.
He made the qualifying block (the top 16 out of 60 bowlers) by rolling a six-game total of 1,319, which ranked him second in the field.
He won his first match against Byron Center senior Adam Coval, 388-362, to advance into the round of eight. Despite a two-game pinfall of 445, he lost by four pins at that level to Flint Kearsley’s Howard Hammond.
