This is how it is supposed to look: With grace and greatness, they glided to victory like clockwork.
This is how it is supposed to feel: With fist-pumps and high fives, they only celebrate after their success has spoken for itself.
This is how it is supposed to be: After another weekend when Vanderbilt football was stuck in neutral, the women’s bowling team was in the fast lane, striking down its competition with pins to spare.
Not that wins are a rarity for this group. The winners of Vanderbilt’s only national championship in school history in 2007, the bowling team and head coach John Williamson have set the bar high not for just this university’s athletic program, but also for bowling programs nationwide.
However, for Williamson, the All-Americans honors, the championship, the accolades are secondary to a classy culture he strives to create, a culture that—ironically enough—has earned him an accolade of his own: National Coach of the Year.
“We have a team of high achievers on multiple fronts,” Williamson said toVUCommodores.com. “They are winners in every way…This is a team of future leaders.”
Personifying this winning precedent is senior Josie Earnest, two-time National Player of the Year and MVP of the NCAA Tournament during Vanderbilt’s national title run. She is in many ways like the Tim Tebow of college bowling, representing the program in such a positive light that she and her younger sister Jessica (now a Vanderbilt freshman) have been selected to lead the United States in international competition of the nation’s bowling team.
It speaks volumes to Vanderbilt overall that athletes like the Earnests make the Commodores their choice school, showing that Vanderbilt sports is moving in the direction Vice Chancellor David Williams and others envisioned when Vanderbilt athletics were realigned.
“I chose Vanderbilt because it offered the total package,” Earnest said. “We get a combination of exceptional academics, homey environment and a sports program that strives to succeed. This was an opportunity that could not be passed up.”
Thus, as the Lady Commodores look to bring back Vanderbilt’s second national championship, they have an opportunity not only to lay a foundation, but to cement a standard.
With a myriad of Commodore sports rewriting their personal history books in recent years—football’s bowl win, women’s basketball’s SEC Championship, men’s basketball’s Sweet 16 appearances, baseball’s #1 national ranking—it is the bowling team that has rolled its way to unparalleled perennial success.
With Jay-Z soon coming to town, it is only fitting to call this group The Blueprint.
Click here to read a recap of the team's first meet this last weekend.
