Published: March 25, 2008 11:24 pm            

South product Kara Bunting helping build Purdue’s bowling team into national competitor

TERRE HAUTE — Don’t be fooled by the light and airy demeanor of Kara Bunting.

This Purdue University sophomore possesses the proverbial “eye of the tiger,” the key to her rapid rise up the collegiate bowling success ladder.

Bunting, a former Terre Haute South standout, was a bowling prodigy. As a sophomore in 2004, she captured the Indiana State high school singles championship. After completing an outstanding prep career, she took her bowling acumen to a top-notch women’s program at Purdue.

As a freshman performer with the Boilermakers a year ago, she helped her team to a seventh-place national tournament finish, the best in school history.

This year, she has directed Purdue to a Big Ten championship, then on March 15-16, added a second-place finish in the sectional round of the Intercollegiate Team Championships in Chattanooga, Tenn.

By virtue of their top-four finish in the sectional round, Purdue qualified to return to the ITC Nationals on April 16-19 in Wichita, Kan., hopeful of improving on that seventh-place finish of a year ago.

“We feel good about what we’ve accomplished this year. We haven’t got a lot of notoriety … but we’re starting to at least get mentioned in the school newspaper,” Bunting joked late last week. “We’re not well-known like our basketball teams, but the students are starting to know we’re there.”

At the ITC Sectional, the competing teams had to bowl 32 Baker System games, 16 each day.

The Baker System is a variation on the traditional five-person bowling team. Simply explained, a team’s lead-off bowler rolls the first and sixth frames, the second bowler the second and seventh frames, etc.

Bunting is Purdue’s anchor bowler, meaning she bowls the sixth and the all-important 10th frame in Baker play.

For those uninitiated to bowling, the anchor bowler is analogous to a cleanup hitter or closer in baseball, the person running the final leg of a relay race in track, the go-to-scorer in just about any other team sport. Get the idea?

“I’m proud of my season,” Bunting said of herself individually. “I had no all-tournaments [selections] last year. I’ve had four this year.”

Statistically, Bunting’s claim of improvement is given credence according to collegebowling.com. Bunting currently ranks 20th nationally in tournament average (187.257) — on much tougher lane conditions than the average league bowler — up from 53rd last year (178.034).

On the first day of the ITC sectional (March 14), Bunting finished 15th in the singles portion of the tournament with an average of 183.83.

“It’s a competitive atmosphere … we practice like we compete,” Bunting said of the tough competition within her team. “We’ve been second in at least four tournaments this year.

“I like it a lot,” Bunting described her choice of college. “I mostly hang out with bowling team members. It’s been great.”

Bunting says her team practiced once a week as a unit during the first semester, with most of their weekends devoted to competing in numerous collegiate tournaments. They’ve been practicing twice a week during the second semester. In addition, all team members are expected to put in one hour of time in individually.

“Our practices are well-structured, we have different drills we do … we do a lot of accuracy things,” she mentioned.

But don’t think Bunting knows all there is about bowling. Bunting and some of her teammates are enhancing their knowledge, actually enrolled in a bowling class this semester run by their assistant coach. “It’s a further practice … we’re getting more critical help on our games.”

Bunting says their team — designated as a club sport, not part of the intercollegiate athletic budget — is not allowed to have fundraisers.

“We get a certain budget from the school,” Bunting noted. “It pays for our traveling, but we have to pay for our food.

“We get free practice time whenever we want if there are open lanes. They provide us bowling shirts and discounts on [bowling] equipment. [Purdue] is going to give us money for a couple of meals at Nationals.”

The team practices at the 10-lane bowling facility within the mammoth Purdue Memorial Union building.

During this downtime period between college tournaments, Bunting will keep sharp by bowling at the Indiana Women’s State Tournament in Merrillville on Apr. 5-6 — “bowling as a team with my teammates” — then compete in an individual tournament in northern Indiana the next weekend.

Bunting is currently working towards her bachelor’s degree in sociology. Down the line, she hopes to pursue her master’s degree in social work.

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NOTE — Another former Terre Haute standout bowler, North’s Allen Breshears, will bowl with Vincennes University in the men’s portion of the ITC Championships in Wichita, Kan. the same weekend.

Breshears, a sophomore at VU, helped his team placed third at the sectional in Chattanooga, Tenn. on March 15-16. This is VU’s first trip to the nationals since 1997.

        

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