Schaumburg’s Gawlik a big success

To say Schaumburg senior bowler Jodi Gawlik has enjoyed great success at the prep level would be putting it mildly.

Gawlik led her Saxons to Mid-Suburban League titles as a sophomore in 2009 and as a junior last year. She was tops in the MSL in average in 2010 with a 213.77 and rolled the season’s high series (728) and in 2009 she had the league’s high game (290).

This season, after the recently completed MSL championship tourney, the senior took first place individually again with an average mark of 221.95, double-digits better than the league runner-up.

And not the least amongst her accomplishments was her tremendous performance at last season’s state tournament at Cherry Bowl Lanes in Rockford.

Gawlik bowled her heart out at the tourney, and her total pinfall of 2,729 just missed out on the individual state championship by only 27 pins to Frannie Steiner of Collinsville.

“Jodi’s been our anchor the last two years, and you can’t say anything better than that,” said Schaumburg coach Mark Kelly. “She throws the ball the same way every time, and that’s hard to teach a high school bowler.

“She always has the same consistency and the same ball speed — plus she’s as strong as an ox. She could be bowling her 20th game in a row and still be throwing the ball as fast as she was in her first game.”

Not bad for someone who, although taking up the game at a young age, said her mother Donna first resisted the idea of competitive bowling for herself and her sister Marilyn (a former Illinois state champion).

“I think my mom was just a little worried about how (competition) would affect us,” said Gawlik. “She wanted to make sure that bowling stayed fun.”

It certainly has stayed a lot of fun for Gawlik and also for her Saxons teammates the last few seasons as they qualified for state as a team in 2009 and 2010.

“I have confidence,” said the senior. “I believe that I’m one of of the best bowlers in the state, and I think my athletic ability has a lot to do with that.”

Kelly could not agree more.

“Our team goes as she goes,” said Kelly. “If she struggles, we struggle — but when she’s playing well, it picks up our whole team.”

Gawlik participates in several leagues in the off-season, and for the past few years has participated in and qualified for the USBC Junior Gold Bowling championships.

Gawlik has just recently signed to attend and bowl for McKendree University in downstate Lebanon, where she hopes to focus on studies of zoology or possibly something in the math arena.

She’ll also be united again on the McKendree bowling team with older sister Marilyn.

“That’ll take some getting used to,” said Jodi Gawlik with a laugh. “When we bowled together on the Schaumburg team, she basically had the authority and I followed her lead. Now this season, I know I’m one of the leaders and I do my best to motivate the team.”

And a motivating factor for Jodi personally is to get back to the state tournament and try to win the title, as she felt a bit of disappointment last year at coming so close and not taking the crown.

“It was bittwersweet,” said Gawlik. “After it was over all I could think was, ‘what if I’d picked up that 10 pin,’ or ‘what if I had thrown that ball differently.’

“But it is what it is. Like my mom says, just because someone bowls better than you one day, it doesn’t mean they are better than you.

“I’d love to win state, but that (falling short) can’t take anything away from the last two years, second last year and 11th as a sophomore.”

Kelly, for one, doesn’t want the senior to put too much pressure on herself, but thinks that if she makes it to the ultimate tournament this year as expected, she’ll do just fine.

“If anything, she came back from last year’s state tourney even more determined,” said Kelly. “This year I want her to just go out there and bowl.

“Sometimes, if you don’t get off to a good start at tournaments, you can put too much pressure on yourself.”

Speaking of getting off to a good beginning, Gawlik was not happy with hers this season.

“I didn’t start out bowling up to my own standards,” said Gawlik. “I was averaging about 204, and my senior season didn’t look like it was going to turn out how I envisioned it to be. But lately I’ve been doing much better. I’ve got my average way up.”

And if anyone would question the comittment of this stellar senior, they had to look no further than AMF Lanes in Rolling Meadows last month at one of the MSL’s meets.

Gawlik had already bowled superbly in leading her team to a win, but after many of the matches were over and most of the girls had gone home, Gawlik was still out on the lanes, practicing shots with her coach.

“I was just getting sick of losing,” said the senior, whose Saxons dominated the MSL the last two years but found themselves in fourth place in the league near the end of this season.

“When I bowled here as a freshman, everyone was afraid to bowl against us — and when I was a sophomore and junior, it was the same way.

“But now as the season has gone on, our team is coming together, and we’re getting better and better as each week goes by.”