BATON ROUGE - With the calendar turning to October, the state’s four NCAA women’s college bowling teams are getting ready to start their 2026-27 wraparound seasons.

Louisiana Tech and Tulane are schedule to get their fall portion of the season underway this weekend at the SWIBC events in Garland, Texas.

Tech has apparently made the athletics withdrawal from Conference USA complete as the bowling Techsters are now independents and not part of college bowling’s great league, the C-USA Bowling League. They are a veteran team with four seniors on this year’s squad.

Tulane, coached by Hayley Veitch, has been like Tech consistently ranked in the top 25 coaches’ poll and will look to continue that this season. They have one Louisiana bowler on their roster, grad student Sarah Robi of Metairie, who prepped by Archbishop Chapelle.

The Southern Jaguars program has a new look with Jalyn Rogers stepping into the head coaching position after serving as assistant coach for the 2025-26 season.

One of the most accomplished bowlers in program history, Rogers played a pivotal role in elevating Southern into one of the premier bowling programs in the Southwestern Athletic Conference. During her career, she helped lead the Lady Jaguars to three consecutive SWAC regular-season championships and three appearances in the SWAC Tournament Championship match.

Rogers made an immediate impact as a freshman during the 2021-22 season, earning SWAC Freshman of the Year and First-Team All-SWAC honors after posting a 194.25 average during the conference's SWAC Roundups, which ranked fourth in the league. She also helped guide Southern to its first SWAC Tournament Championship appearance since 2011.

She continued to establish herself as one of the conference's elite bowlers, earning First-Team All-SWAC recognition in each of her four seasons. Rogers finished as the conference runner-up individually during her junior campaign and served as Southern's anchor throughout her collegiate career.

The Jaguars have one bowler from the state in Ar’Yana Manual of Youngsville, who prepped at Southside High.

Grambling has a new coach this year and he happens to be the former coach at Southern in Barry Doyle. He had a very successful six seasons building the program to championship caliber in earning those regular season titles.

Mikayla Stephens of Alexandria is the state representative on the Tigers roster.

Southern will open its play and will join LA Tech in Tulane’s annual Colonial Classic at Colonial Lanes in Harahan, Oct. 9-11. That always turned out to be a good early fall showcase for the schools.

Grambling’s schedule has not been posted as of yet.

We will see some of our state teams in Baton Rouge in early 2027 in the winter-spring portion of the season. Southern will host the SWAC Roundup event Jan. 15-17 at All Star Lanes which obviously will feature all the conference teams and Tech, Tulane and the Jaguars are already listed in the Baton Rouge TNBA Open, Feb. 12-14, hosted by Jackson State.

So a great chance to see some quality women’s college bowling in our state this coming season.

Of course several of our former high school bowlers will be competing for NCAA schools this coming year, most notably state high school champion Ava Doucet of St. Joseph’s Academy, who will join another Redsticker, junior Jordan Wingerter, at UAB.

Bonta Named Top PBA Rookie

In a year when rookies made a lot of noise on the PBA Tour, Brandon Bonta was named the Rookie of the Year in the PBA vote with some 58 percent of a divided vote.

The 23-year-old Bonta won one title, including the season-opening PBA Players Championship. Bonta climbed the stepladder and won the title over EJ Tackett with the 36th televised perfect game in PBA history to claim the major title.

Thanks for joining us, back with you next week.

Until then, good luck and good bowling, 

                                                       Kent Lowe