Pennfield, Kearsley Enjoy Repeat Success
March 2, 2018
By Tim Robinson
Special for Second Half
CANTON – It was like old times for Battle Creek Pennfield’s boys bowling team at Friday’s Division 2 Team Finals at Super Bowl.
Winning the title was nothing new; the Panthers did it last year in Division 3. That made Pennfield the first school to win back-to-back bowling championships in different divisions.
The Panthers’ opponent in the Final was familiar, too. Pennfield and Coldwater are both members of the Interstate 8 Athletic Conference.
This season included, however, the first wins over the Cardinals in coach Rick Hinds’ career at Pennfield, and the Panthers took three of four matches – two during the regular season and the third Friday.
“It was tight all season,” Hinds said. “One of our wins was by one pin. We see them a lot.”
But it was a little nerve-wracking for the Panthers after a strong start.
Pennfield won the first Baker game 223-137, by an 86-pin difference, and as it turned out the Panthers needed all of them.
Coldwater made a furious comeback, winning the next Baker game by 25 pins and taking the regular games by 54.
But Pennfield’s strong start held, and the Panthers won by seven pins, 1,264-1,257.
That came in part due to a strong performance by freshman Carson Dyer, who was put in the lineup and finished with strikes in each of his final four frames.
“I plugged him in, and he finished,” Hinds said.
Senior Nick Hohnberger played a key role, having only one open frame during qualifying, while senior Sean Young and junior James Ruoss carried the team during a semifinal win over top seed Tecumseh.
“The competition was stiffer in Division 2,” Hinds said. “Nothing against Division 3, but the schools are bigger and a lot more competitive. I was told we were the smallest Division 2 school to win it. That’s a really good thing.”
On the girls side, the Division 2 trophy will find plenty of company at Flint Kearsley.
The top-seeded Hornets won their fifth consecutive Division 2 title and sixth in the last seven years by beating Tecumseh 1,186-990 in the title match.
Kearsley led by just 10 pins after the Baker games, then won by nearly 200 pins in individual play.
“What happened was I have girls who have experience and knew what to do when we got to the Finals,” Kearsley coach Rob Ploof said. “We filled a lot of frames in the first individual game.”
With the outcome determined, Ploof asked for volunteers among his starters to sit so senior Mary Wheeler and freshman Allison Robbins could get a chance to bowl in the Final.
Without hesitation, junior Alexis Roof and sophomore Imari Blond volunteered.
“They wanted to let our seniors finish,” Ploof said. “I preach all season long it’s about the team. I quote Bo (Schembechler, the late University of Michigan football coach) all the time. It’s the team, the team, the team. No one cares how you scored, as long as you win.”
Kearsley held off Sturgis in the quarterfinals.
“They gave us a run for our money,” Ploof said, “but Emma Boychuk, a senior, struck out in the 10th and won us the match. I give her a lot of credit.”
In the semifinals against Carleton Airport, senior Karlee Griffin led the way, with senior Barbara Hawes making a solid contribution as well.
The Hornets then knocked off Tecumseh, a team that gave Kearsley fits at the beginning of Ploof’s tenure. The first year his team bested the Indians was 2012, the first year Kearsley won the Division 2 title.
Ploof said his program has a strong feeder system at the elementary and middle school levels.
“When they get to the varsity level, they’re ready,” he said.
And for the fifth year in a row, the Hornets finished with a win.
“It never gets old,” Ploof said. “Never.”
Click for full boys results and girls results.
Gift of Bowling Keeps Giving as Eisenhower's Harnden Pursues Championship Repeat
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
January 30, 2025
Birthday parties usually feature the best gifts for the person celebrating the birthday. But in this case, the best gift might have ended up going to one of the party’s attendees.
Back when he was in fifth grade, current Utica Eisenhower senior bowler Dylan Harnden was invited to a birthday party at Shelby Lanes in Shelby Township by friend and current Eisenhower bowling teammate Kingston Corpuz.
That day, they celebrated Corpuz – and Harnden received the gift of being introduced to bowling.
“That was his first time bowling, and he basically got the bug that he wanted to bowl,” he said Dylan’s father and current Eisenhower coach Mark Harnden. “From that point forward, he just kind of wanted to get better and better.”
The last couple of years, it can be argued that there’s been no better high schooler in the state.
Last year as a junior, Harnden captured the Division 1 Singles Finals title after also winning his Regional. Naturally, he was named to the all-state Dream Team by the Michigan High School Interscholastic Bowling Coaches Association.
This season, Harnden completed a unique career trifecta by winning the individual title at the Macomb County championship.
“I can say that I’ve won that tournament along with other great Macomb bowlers who have won that tournament,” he said. “It was great to see myself winning it.”
In addition, Harnden is sporting a 222 average — one pin below his average last year — and has scholarship offers in tow from two prestigious college bowling programs, St. Ambrose University in Iowa and Trine University in Indiana.
Not bad for someone who didn’t know anything about the sport until that birthday party invite roughly seven years ago.
“It only took me maybe about a half year to a year to get the hang of everything and get really good,” Harnden said. “It was interesting at first.”
In addition to winning the state title last season, Harnden as a sophomore in 2023 finished first out of the qualifying block at the Division 1 Final but ended up falling to eventual champion Brendan Riley of Waterford Mott in the quarterfinal round.
This year, Harnden’s big objective has been continuing to master mental aspects of the game.
“A lot of things this year compared to last year is the same stuff, except for trying to expand my knowledge,” he said. “Knowing how to transition better, knowing what balls to go to and trying to hit different shots. Just expanding knowledge mainly from last year to this year just so if I encounter new scenarios, I can use it better.”
Mark Harnden said Dylan when he was younger tried a one-handed bowling style, but quickly discovered that going with the two-handed style was a better fit for him.
“It allowed him to bowl with a heavier bowling ball,” he said. “As you know, heavier balls don’t tend to deflect off the pins.”
This year, not only could Dylan Harnden be a contender to win another Singles Finals title, but he has a decent shot of being part of a team champion thanks to a merger.
The Utica and Eisenhower bowling programs joined forces as one this year, something Mark Harnden said was talked about for a while due to low participation numbers experienced by both programs.
“We’re trying to really allow two programs to survive in the downside until more kids get interested in bowling,” he said.
What the merger has created is a pair of powerful combined Utica-Eisenhower programs.
The girls team now features contributors from last season’s Macomb Area Conference Red and White champions joined together as one, with returning all-state bowlers Ava Mazza (sophomore, Utica) and Sophia Matheson (senior, Eisenhower) atop an incredibly deep lineup.
For the boys, what was the outstanding duo of Harnden and Corpuz has turned into a terrific trio, with sophomore Marco Mazza joining the fray. Ava and Marco Mazza are twins whose father, John, bowled professionally.
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
(Photo of Dylan Harnden courtesy of the Harnden family.)