The weather has gotten colder, but the winter sports season is about to heat up in Vermont. While most of the coverage is going to involve basketball and hockey locally, my venture for the fourth year in a row will be in high school bowling. We've seen teams rise to amazing firsts and others continue success from years before. We've even seen new teams try to make a name for themselves in the sport. The 2025-26 season begins this Saturday and will wrap up on February 28th with the state championship at SpareTime in Colchester. Before that, a few notes about how high school bowling works.
Each match begins with an individual round where all bowlers will throw 2 games to determine their average for the week. Those averages are totaled and divided by the number of bowlers to get the total average score, which determines each team's placement during the match. Individual totals are also critical as the top 32 bowlers at the end of the regular season advance to the individual tournament on February 21st at Rutland Bowlerama.
Once the totals are determined, the teams in the match are seeded for the Bakers round of the match. Most matches have 3 teams facing off while others have 4. In the case of 3-team matches, the teams finishing 2nd and 3rd would face off with the winner facing the top seed; in 4-team matches, 1 faces 4 and 2 faces 3 with the winners facing for the win and the losers battling for 3rd.
The Bakers format is a best-of-3 where each team chooses 5 bowlers to try and knock down the most pins. In each match, bowler 1 will throw the first and sixth frame, bowler 2 throws the second and seventh frame and so forth.
In the tournaments, the individual round begins with a bracket-style format determined by the best 2-score averages at the event (regular season averages may determine tiebreakers). Eliminations continue until the final 4 individuals remain. From there, it's a stepladder final to determine the champion (4 vs. 3; winner faces 2; winner faces 1).
The state championship will be a best-of-7 series in the Bakers format. Winners move on to the next round with the final round determining the state champions.
As of December 16, there are 10 teams competing in high school bowling for 2025-2026: Essex (EHS), Burlington (BHS), South Burlington/Colchester (SBC), White River Valley (WRV), Randolph (RAND), Brattleboro (BRAT), Windsor (WIND), St. Johnsbury (SJA), Craftsbury (CA) and defending state champions Fair Haven (FH). On December 13th, the Ghosts defeated Fair Haven in the Kickoff Classic at Rutland, getting a big of revenge from their 2025 final which saw the Slaters take home the title.
One final message: I've gone out to a lot of high school sporting events over the years, and I have seen my fair share of unsportsmanlike conduct. Sometimes it's from the players but mostly this involves the fans in the stands who are berating officials, opposing players or even their own team. When I first went to a bowling event (2023 state championship), I saw something that made me feel happy: the joy from each team not just for their teammates, but for their competitors as well. If you come out to a match (regular season or tournament), you have the chance to feel that too. I hope to hear from you all in 2025 (my e-mail is in my X/twitter bio) or see you at the matches. Until then, peace, love and hopefully a few turkeys or hambones mixed in.
