We have 14 high school bowlers returning who made one of my all-state teams, as well as 29 who were listed as honorable mentions. A bunch of kids were impressive in tournaments over the off-season: Junior Bowlers Tour (New Jersey and Pennsylvania), Central Jersey Junior Girls Challenge, and the national Junior Gold finals in Cleveland back in July. There's a world of talent here.
I sent out an email blast to every coach in my address book looking to pick up some information about this year's squads, and to make some suggestions & requests for the future, and I've heard back from several (thanks!), but I'll renew the request here and include parents: new bowlers I might not know about, anyone who's made a major improvement, coaching changes, transfers - anything that can help make my rankings fair and accurate is appreciated. Just as importantly, I want to encourage every single league, conference and division to have a public-facing standings sheet as well as reporting results to nj.com. Many do, and they're awesome (especially those on leaguesecretary.com), but there are several major bowling conferences that don't have, for instance, player averages available. No other sport seems to conspire to hide their results quite like bowling. Let's end that.
Another thing that's been hard to find is a listing of in-season tournaments. I assume that these are communicated between coaches and ADs throughout the state, and that's fine, but a public listing would be great. The Shore Conference affiliated tournaments are listed on their site (link), so any coaches looking for a tournament should check it out. And any tournament results sent along to me would be great, too.
Anyway, I've been trying to collect as much information as possible before the season starts for real on December 2, working on preseason all-state teams, a list of returning stars, a sampling of up & coming bowlers (including some impact freshmen) and a reasonable guess at a preseason top 20 for both boys and girls. These will be posted over the next few weeks.
But first, I need to talk about Greg.
My original intention when starting this blog was to remain mostly anonymous, but my own technical stupidity put my name on everything from the jump. As a result, many, if not most, of you know that my kid bowls for Warren Hills. We at Warren Hills lost a big part of our family when longtime coach Greg Rottengen passed away in August. He was 74.
I'd known Greg for about 25 years - first as a competitor when we bowled against each other in leagues in the 90s, then as a coach when he worked a bit with my daughter during Saturday morning leagues at Oakwood Lanes, and finally as a highly successful coach at the high school level. I didn't know that he taught science for 35 years, or that he had been in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. It was always all about the bowling.
After the age of 50 (and a lifetime of bowling) Greg became a PBA member, competing in many regional and senior events, earned his way into the Morris County Bowling hall of fame with his on-lane performance.and he worked to become a silver-level USBC-certified coach. Personally, I think the coaching was the high point.
Decades of bowling experience, technical expertise and an extensive teaching background made him an ideal coach for the kids at Oakwood Lanes. While Oakwood is the home of Warren Hills bowling, it's also a regional center, and the youth program draws kids from a huge area. Over the years, Greg worked, at least a little, with kids from Warren Hills, Phillipsburg, Belvidere, Warren Tech, Hackettstown, North Warren, West Morris Central, Sparta, Morris Tech, Immaculata, Voorhees, North Hunterdon, Hunterdon Central and Mount Olive. Probably more.
His work as Warren Hills' head coach was extraordinary. In a sport dominated by Shore Conference, GMC and Olympic Conference squads, we had this little oasis of excellence at the only bowling program in Warren County. Greg did exactly what we all say we want from coaches - he was flexible enough to coach each bowler a little differently: laying back when necessary, getting very technical when it was warranted, laying down discipline if the situation demanded it, and being an absolute goofball when the team needed to loosen up. Greg was named North Jersey or state coach of the year at least four times. In the process, he produced dozens of excellent bowlers, including future college bowlers, all-conference & all-area selections, and a smattering of all-staters. I'm hesitant to start listing names because I'll leave out a whole bunch, but Darren Flynn, Michele DeVries, John Mercurio, Ben & Abby Laws, Justin Walker, Jessica Yerance, Aaron Argondizzo, Elizabeth Hudock, Greg Ryback, Lauren Scholes, Mike Handley, Jenna Henderson, Bobby Collins, Sammie Pearson, Brian Duke, Ryan Stephany, Darryl Price and current seniors Eric Lawson, Avante Wilson and Katie Winch have all made their mark. Anyway, it was always the team that mattered most, and Warren Hills won 9 sectional championships under Greg, including both the boys and girls teams the past two years, and he finally reached the mountaintop when the 2017 girls won the state Group 3 title and the Tournament of Champions.
The bowling program had a small memorial get-together before school started, and more than two dozen past, present and future Blue Streaks came together to remember Greg; even more attended the memorial at the funeral home. He meant a lot to the program, and to the kids, and will be missed terribly.
During this most recent run of success for the Warren Hills program, Greg expressed several times how impressed he was with the sustained talent level on the team, that new freshmen kept entering the program ready to contribute, and that the younger kids just keep getting better. He said more than once how lucky he was to be a part of a program like this.
We were even luckier to have had him.
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