April 11, 2017
By Zac Ellis
VUCommodores.com
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Vanderbilt hired John Williamson as the university’s first bowling coach in the fall of 2004, and the newcomer soon realized he needed student-athletes in order to compete. One of Williamson’s strategies was, quite simply, an open casting call: the athletic department placed an ad in the Vanderbilt Hustler student newspaper seeking calling on any female students with a bowling interest.
Even at a university that boasts a relatively small enrollment, Vanderbilt boasted men’s and women’s club bowling squads. Thus, Williamson expected a solid amount of interest.
However, his expectations fell a bit short.
“We get to the tryout, and only 10 girls had showed up,” Williamson recalls. “I thought, well, I guess this is the tryout.”
More than a decade later, Vanderbilt’s bowling squad has come a long way under Williamson’s watch. The Commodores have evolved into one of the premier programs in all of collegiate bowling, a national presence in and around the sport. It’s been fast work, too; in 2007 – just two seasons after Vanderbilt launched its program – Williamson led the Dores to the NCAA championship, the first national title by any Commodore athletics program.
Now Vanderbilt is 10 seasons removed from reaching the pinnacle of NCAA women’s bowling. This week, it hopes celebrate that anniversary in style in Baton Rouge, La. where the Dores will be one of eight teams vying for the 2017 NCAA Bowling Championship. It is the 12th straight appearance in the NCAA Championship field for Vanderbilt, which has solidified itself as a perennial power less than 15 years after asking regular students to join its roster.
“Vanderbilt University sells itself,” Williamson said. “The biggest part of this process was showing the outside world that we were serious about NCAA women’s bowling.”
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That message has been delivered. Entering the 2017 NCAA tournament, Vanderbilt is second nationally to only Central Missouri and Nebraska (13 and 14, respectively) in all-time NCAA appearances. It has notched national runner-up finishes in 2011 and 2013 alongside its 2007 crown.
Williamson stumbled upon his current job almost by chance. In the spring of 2004, Vanderbilt and athletics director David Williams II made the decision to add women’s bowling as part of a Title IX review. Williamson, a Nashville native and former football player at Ole Miss, had been working at Vanderbilt as director of operation for coach Tim Corbin’s baseball team. Administrators caught wind of Williamson’s penchant for knocking down pins – he spent many summer days with friends at a $5 bowling alley in Nashville – and asked him to apply for the job.
That roll of the dice paid off for Williamson. The Commodores now recruit the country’s best bowlers to West End, a tradition that truly began in Williamson’s second season in 2005-06. That’s when his first true five-woman signing class helped Vanderbilt reach the NCAA tournament for the first time.
The following year in 2007, the Dores struck gold by inking highly touted recruit Josie Earnest to a scholarship. Earnest, then the No. 1 recruit in the country, picked Vanderbilt over bowling powerhouses such as Nebraska. Her decision to come to Nashville didn’t go unnoticed in college bowling circles. “Josie could have picked where she wanted to go to school,” Williamson said. “All the sudden, her being associated with Vanderbilt caused other players of similar talent to take us seriously.”
Earnest can still recall Williamson’s recruiting pitch. The coach ventured to Earnest’s hometown of Vandalia, Ill. with a four-page written plan detailing how the high school senior’s college career would play out, year by year. That meticulousness resonated with Earnest, as did a chance to create her own legacy at an under-the-radar program on the rise.
Vanderbilt would go on to win the NCAA title during Earnest’s freshman season. She became a four-time All-American and the first two-time NCAA Player of the Year in NCAA bowling history. Now Earnest is Williamson’s assistant coach at Vanderbilt, which boasts three international players on its roster: Maria Bulanova (Russia), Emily Rigney (Australia) and Kristin Quah (Singapore). From inside-out, Earnest has witnessed first-hand the program’s evolution in wake of an NCAA title.
“We recruit kids and tell them, we’re going play for national championships,” Earnest said. “Now, you never know what happens when you get to the NCAA Championships. But we know we’re going to compete for championships, and kids really buy into that.
“The number of recruits who still remember our 2007 title, you can see it still holds weight. Now the fact that we’re on our 13th season being in the NCAA tournament, it is a big deal to them.”
The Dores hope they can carry momentum into the NCAA Championships this week. Last month they won the Southland Bowling League for the second time in three years by sweeping top-seeded Arkansas State. Junior Katie Stark earned the tournament’s Most Valuable Player, but it’s freshman Maria Bulanova who ranks second in the Southland with an average of 20.971 (1944 frames) this season.
On the 10-year anniversary of Vanderbilt’s NCAA bowling championship, could a similar finish be in the cards in Baton Rouge?
“This current team is as close to that 2007 team as I’ve had,” Williamson said. “They have that feistiness, that love for competition. In match-play scenarios, that’s when this team tends to be its best.”
The 2017 NCAA Bowling Championship begins on Friday. Check out the bracket here.