WICHITA – The coaching staff may have changed, but the standards remain high for Campus girls bowling.
 
Shortly after the Colts won their eighth Class 6A state championship in 11 years on Friday at Bowlero Northrock, they retreated to the bowling center’s adjacent restaurant because, well, penance is penance.
 
“What we do is if we shoot under 200 (in a Baker game), we have to do five push-ups for every game that’s under,” Campus junior Riley Emerson said. “So we had to go in the bar and do 20.”
 
It was a labor of love for Campus, which gave assistant-turned-head coach Brett Marrs his first state championship without Kenny Fulkerson, the architect of the Colts’ program who retired after winning the 2024 title. Campus, led by top-10 finishes from Emerson and sophomore Angie Moser in the tenpin portion of the meet, overcame its Baker “shortcomings” to win by 150 pins over runner-up Wichita Northwest with a 3,307 pinfall total.
 

“It’s just another day at the bowling alley, I guess,” said Moser, who rolled a 637 series to finish seventh individually. “We were expecting to come out with a big win. Northwest did get us at the (Great Plains Classic), but we overcame them in regionals and took first place there, and then took them again today.”
 
Moser and Emerson, who finished third with a 685 series, posted season-best scores to earn individual medals along with junior Chante Anderson, who finished 20^th with a 576. Moser, Emerson and junior Caitlynn Clough collected their second state titles Friday after helping Campus snap a two-year title hiatus last season.
 
Junior Paige Mashak and sophomore Ella Rutter rounded out the all-underclassmen lineup for Campus, which showed remarkable consistency in the season’s final competitions. The Colts posted a 3,331 pinfall in winning the Ark Valley-Chisholm Trail I meet and 3,360 at regionals.
 
With Marrs now in the lead coaching role and former Wichita Trinity coach Dalen Rosiere serving as an assistant, the Colts were again best when it counted most.  
 
“You lose a coach who’s been a staple of the program since the beginning,” said Marrs, an assistant to Fulkerson for 12 years. “Bringing on Dalen, things change and not necessarily that the old was bad and the new is good. It’s just a different style.
 
“Taking over this group was amazing because I knew what I was getting. I have a bunch of leaders. In the school, in the bowling alley, they’re great girls. There’s some things that we changed that may have helped us, but I think where we started was right where we wanted to be.”
 

 
The Colts were dominant throughout the season, but lost to Wichita Northwest in the best-of-3 Baker finals at the Great Plains in early February. Marrs didn’t fret much over the rare defeat, but his bowlers used it to galvanize them for the season’s stretch run.
 
“It did a lot for us,” Emerson said. “They were in our regionals and after we lost to them – we do not like losing – it was our goal to let anybody beat us like that again.
 
“We all practiced very hard after GPC. We wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again and that it wasn’t close.”
 
Campus settled the first score by winning the Wichita regional by nearly 200 pins, with Northwest finishing second. On Friday, the Colts built a 97-pin lead over Washburn Rural and 219 ahead of Northwest in tenpin, a margin that proved to be sufficient even without a satisfying Baker set.
 
“Yesterday at practice, we only did Bakers,” Emerson said. “I feel like we did better yesterday. I feel like our nerves got to us a little bit. We would have liked to do better, but we still did really good.”
 
The Colts posted Baker scores of 199, 191, 197 and 192 for a 779 total, second only to Northwest, which surpassed 200 in three of the four games for an 848. Washburn Rural dropped from second to third during the Bakers, unable to gain ground on the Colts in any of the four games.
 
“There were some really, really good teams here,” Marrs said. “Northwest is really good, Washburn Rural is really good. I had a great feeling though, with our lead going into Bakers and knowing that we had that cushion.
 
“As far as the Bakers, we probably shot a little lower than I thought we should have, and we knew Northwest was doing good. But we just kind of keep it where we need it. We bowled very well today. I think it’s the third highest set in a state championship, but I feel we’ve got more.”
 
Wichita Northwest, led by 2024 individual state champion Kalee Stockstill’s eighth-place finish, ended with a 3,157 pinfall. Washburn Rural, led by fifth-place individual finisher Liz Poling, took third at 3,081.
 
Campus was the only one of the nine teams with all six bowlers posting series in the 500s and 600s. Each Colt contributed at least once to the four-player team score during tenpin qualifying.

The seeds of that were sown in a slightly revamped approach to daily practices this winter.
 
“We all embraced the changes,” Emerson said. “The main thing was we didn’t just go to practice and bowl a couple games. We had some structure where we’d warm up a little bit and then shoot spares and do drills. I felt like that helped us a lot to get better and improve throughout the season. I feel like it helped a lot of our girls.”
 
CLASS 6A GIRLS STATE TEAM SCORES
 
1 Campus 3,307; 2. Wichita Northwest 3,157; 3. Washburn Rural 3,081; 4. Mill Valley 3,067; 5. Junction City 2,966; 6. Olathe South 2,838; 7. Shawnee Mission West 2,724; 8. Wichita East 2,698; 9. Shawnee Mission East 2,347.