Riverhead bowling makes county championships for first time in 10 years

When the regular season ended, the Riverhead bowling team was on the outside looking in.

They weren’t able to secure a top-three spot in the league to earn a spot in the Suffolk County championships, despite finishing what head coach Scott Hackal considered their best stretch of the season in the final three games.

“We started real good,” Hackal said. “But we hit a rough spot in the middle that we never fully recovered from. But what I saw from these guys in the last few matches was incredible.”

The team was given one last chance to make the championships on Feb. 3 in the wild card event at AMF Babylon Lanes. The team delivered. Just about every team in Suffolk County competed in the event, but only the top unqualified teams fought to earn a spot. Riverhead finished eighth out of the 34 teams that competed and second among the teams that hadn’t qualified yet to earn their first championship appearance in 10 years.

“I think we started to really get some momentum in that wild card round,” senior Eddie Bedell said. “In the opening game, I think we posted the best score we had all year. Our confidence only grew from there.”

Hackal, who has announced his retirement, prepped the team for an environment that they never played in. He called into AMF Babylon Lanes to find out their oil pattern on the lanes and had their home venue, The All Star in Riverhead, replicate it.

“You’d be surprised how much the oil on the lanes affects how your ball moves,” Hackal said. “I wanted to give our teams a couple of days to practice on the same oil pattern at the All Star, and I think it helped.”

On Saturday, Feb. 7, Riverhead took the stage. They were one of 16 Suffolk County teams competing for one spot in the New York State championships.

There was barely any standing room at AMF Babylon Lanes as the spectator section was packed to capacity. Over the next six games, all you could hear was the smacking of pins, cheering, high-fives and yelling from one side of the venue to the other.

Riverhead started slow with a wood score of 959, but only picked up the pace the rest of the way. Braylen Blom was the only bowler to hit over 200 in the first game with a score of 237, but he kept encouraging his teammates throughout.

“We got to this point together as a team,” Blom said. “It wasn’t one of us that did it all. We all contributed. We know how good we are, and we just need to focus and get out of our own head.”

The scores improved game after game. Conner Walsh went on a run and posted two consecutive 213’s in games two and three. Bedell posted a 236 in game two, and Amber Farruggia contributed a 223 in game three.

“Bowling is such a mental game, especially in this environment,” Blom said. “We as seniors just had to keep the team even-keeled to reach our highest potential. In this type of game, you can’t get down on yourself.”

Riverhead went from outside the top 10 to number nine on the leaderboard after the first half of the event, but they weren’t done yet. The second half showed exactly what this team is capable of. Jayden Oliver rolled his best score of the night with a 255 in the fourth game. Blom, Walsh and Farruggia all posted 200’s to produce Riverhead’s highest wood score of the day with a 1053 that vaulted Riverhead into seventh place.

“That was probably one of my worst three-game series this season in the first half,” Oliver said. “But my teammates never gave up on me. They kept pushing me. They fired me up, and I was able to find myself in the second half.”

After posting a 1,023 in game five, Riverhead was suddenly in sixth place in all of Suffolk County — a team that wasn’t even supposed to be there based on league play alone. The sixth game tailed off a bit with a 983, and the Blue Waves finished the day in seventh place. 

“It was a crazy year to say the least,” Hackal said. “I just wish we had a little more time because I think we got better and better over the year. Who knows how this would have ended up then? But to finish seventh out of 40 Suffolk County teams, I’m so proud. The crazy part is we left so many spares on the table, we could have finished even higher. Regardless, what we did today was incredible.”