WICHITA – Wesley Cunningham, Elijah Bryant and Kaiden Schmidt are sort of high school bowling's version of gym rats.
 
The three seniors at Wichita's Central Christian Academy, a school of 65 students located a Walmart parking lot away from Northrock Lanes – site of this week's Kansas high school bowling championships – know the bowling center well.
 
They practice there. They work there. And this week, they'll head to Lane 14 to compete for the Lions in the Class 5-1A state tournament.
 
Bowlers from across the state will convene on Northrock to decide Class 6A boys and girls team and individual champions on Thursday, followed by 5-1A on Friday. Central Christian, with its three individual qualifiers, will be the smallest school represented.
 
Schmidt and Cunningham, who work in the bowling center, and Bryant, who works in Northrock's adjacent sports grill, will do so off the clock.
 
"Front desk, snack bar, lane attendant – I get to see the bowling alley from a lot of different perspectives," said Schmidt, who has worked at Northrock about a year. "Bowling is one of my more favorite things."
 
Schmidt, the brawny, bearded member of the CCA trio, picked the right time to have a career-best day on the lanes. Bowling in just his second high school season, Schmidt rolled a 645 series – his first over 600 in competition – to grab the final qualifying spot in last week's Andover regional.
 
"He has arms bigger than my legs," Central Christian coach Mark Johansen said of Schmidt, who has signed to play football at Tabor College. "He has been an absolute gem to coach. Very coachable, and has improved quite a bit."
 
Where Schmidt broke new ground by qualifying for state, Cunningham, a Kansas Bowling Coaches Association All Class 4-1A selection last season, is a returning state medalist.
 
At a regional in which five bowlers rolled 705 series or better, including Kapaun Mount Carmel senior Tanner Becker's 801, Cunningham finished eighth with a 672. He was 16^th at state last season with a 620 at Northrock.
 
Cunningham, who works the front desk at Northrock, switched to a two-handed bowling technique before his junior year. He rolled his first sanctioned 300 game in a summer league at Northrock last June. On Jan. 14, he rolled his first high school 300 – also at Northrock – as part of a 735 series in a triangular meet.
 
"I had just made a giant change to my game," said Cunningham, who has signed to bowl at Grand Canyon University, where he plans to major in performance and sport psychology. "It was a hand position change I figured out the night before the meet. I showed Coach and he looked at it and said, 'If you keep doing that, you're going to shoot great,' and I did."
 
Like Schmidt, Bryant will make his first state appearance on Friday. He helped the Lions set a school record in tenpin qualifying at regionals with his 655 series. Central Christian entered the four-game Baker set with a 2,428 pinfall total, and finished fifth at 3,204.
 
"After my first two games, I didn't really think I was in," said Bryant, who will bowl for Newman University next season. "I hadn't really had a good ball all day and my lane reaction wasn't what I wanted."
 
Bryant, a youth bowler who took time off before returning to the sport in high school, rolled 200 and 199 to start the regionals. After changing balls for the final game, he rolled a 256 and qualified for state by 13 pins.
 
All three Central Christian bowlers say Johansen, a Wichita-area bowling instructor who is in his first season with the Lions, has been a common thread to their success. Johansen, the father of two-time Bishop Carroll state champion and former Wichita State bowler Hollyann Johansen, has worked with many of the area's top bowlers at the amateur and professional levels.
 
"It's so hard to be specific about what he does," said Cunningham, who said Johansen's instruction on changing from a four-step approach to five steps corrected his balance issues. "He's a very simple-minded coach, I'm a very simple-minded learner in general, so we match up very well."
 
Cunningham served as a de facto assistant to Johansen during Central Christian's middle school bowling season in the fall. Johansen chuckled as he recalled the experience as an extended interview.
 
"Everything Wesley does is extremely calculated," Johansen said. "I think he was determined to pick my brain and see before the high school season if I was worthy of coaching him.
 
"He wanted to know if I had coached any other two-handers. When I told him I had, I was suddenly all right with him."
 
Said Bryant: "Having a coach to bounce things off of – like moving down lane – stuff like that, we haven't really had a coach to help me think through those things. Having somebody with experience help me make the right decisions has helped me as a whole."
 
Schmidt, who missed a couple meets while playing for Central Christian's basketball team, raised his average from 150 to 176 since early January. He finished the regional with games of 241 and 225, his highest of the season. During one of the final practices before state on Tuesday, he rolled a 696 series, further evidence to Johansen that his trio is ready for Friday.
 
"I've told them this is a singles tournament now," Johansen said. "I'm available as much as you want or as little as you want."
 
Right at Northrock, a place they're quite comfortable.