Want a good luck charm for your sports team?
Draft Megan Teagle onto your squad.
The 11-year-old Grade 5 Ellison Elementary School student has been bowling for just two years.
Yet in those seasons, Teagle has helped her Lincoln Lanes team win provincial championships and advance to the Youth Bowling Council national finals.
Teagle and fellow Ellison teammates Sydney Orton and Cassi Breitkreutz, and Grade 5 Lavington Elementary student Jessica Laraway join head coach Len Egely for the YBC bantam national finals, beginning today in Regina, after taking the provincial banner in Kamloops.
Teagle and Egely are the only returnees from last year’s team which finished eighth in Quebec.
“It was fun last year, I’d never been to Quebec,” smiled Teagle, a right-hander with a team-high 139 average, snacking on Hawkins Cheezies before a team practice. “This year, I thought it would be great to get back to another nationals, and winning provincials again was pretty cool.”
For Orton, a righty with a 104 average, heading to Regina means a first-ever trip on an airplane. She expects her nerves to be similar to what she experienced at provincials.
“I was really nervous before the first game but when I rolled my first ball, the nerves died down,” said Orton, in her seventh season of bowling.
Breitkreuz’s parents enrolled her and her sister in bowling three years ago to try something new.
“Winning provincials was awesome,” beamed Breitkreuz, who carries a 123 average and is the only bowler on the team to use both hands when delivering her ball. “I’m looking forward to going to Regina, seeing the buildings and meeting kids from other provinces. I want us to do well.”
Being the only one from a different school doesn’t matter to Laraway or her teammates. The right-hander with a 115 average and the three Ellison girls clicked right from the beginning.
“They teamed us up after the in-house tournament for zones and we’ve gotten to know each other since,” said Laraway, a five-year bowler who, like Breitkreuz and Orton, will make her nationals debut in Regina. “Everyone is basically the same and we all get along great.”
The one thing the girls all agree on is that they have an awesome coach in Egely.
“He motivates us and he makes bowling fun,” said Orton.
“He’s funny,” added Laraway.
The feeling is mutual from Egely, 45, a customer service representative for a glass company.
“These girls are very coachable, they listen,” said Egely, who has been involved with bowling since he was 12, but never made it to YBC nationals as a player. “These girls are excellent ambassadors, they are fun to be around, polite, and they will represent our town and our province with the utmost grace.”
Egely, sporting a nationals Mohawk ‘do, believes last year’s experience will help him help prepare the girls.
“It’s going to be fun but it’s 21 games over three days and that’s a lot for someone their age,” he said. “I’ll walk them through it and hopefully what we went through last year will give us a bit of an upper hand.”
Joining the bantam team in Regina is B.C. junior girls singles champ Erin Sakamoto of Lincoln Lanes.
Sakamoto, 14, a Grade 8 Fulton Secondary student, advanced to Regina in dramatic fashion at YBC provincials in Kamloops.
The right-hander with a 199 average needed a mark and seven pins in the final frame to win the provincial banner. Sakamoto opened the 10th with a strike, then punched a three pin. She took out the two-three pins on the left to win by seven.
“I actually didn’t know I had won, I heard everybody cheering in the background,” said Sakamoto, who gives props to her coach, Viki Dumont. “She’s amazing, really encouraging.”
The win in Kamloops took away the sting of finishing second at provincials in 2010 by a few pins for Sakamoto, who has been bowling for eight years, and who also plays team sports like soccer and volleyball.
“I’m going to Regina to have fun and looking forward to the experience,” said Sakamoto. “I haven’t set any goals. I just want to go and do the best I can.”
