By Gena Jones
Waveland Bowl was full of loud, proud parents with bowling periscopes over the weekend as the alley hosted the 2025 CPL Girls Bowling Championships.
Defending champion Morgan Park secured its first back-to-back city championship since a three-year run over 13 years ago. The Mustangs knocked down a combined 5,500 pins on Saturday, with seniors Bree Stewart and LaShaun Tasker-Lewis returning to the podium as first- and third-place individual bowlers, respectively.
Stewart, who put a total of 1,302 pins into the gutter, believes nothing is more important than the team standing behind her.
“If you have a team, then you can do anything. They’re gonna motivate you and hold you up. If you bowl one bad frame, then they got your back,” Stewart said. “We know how to work together, we know how to stay focused and keep each other motivated.”
Tasker-Lewis, who placed third in a tight race with Taft’s Allison Rutkowski, shared Stewart’s heartfelt sentiments about their Mustang teammates.
“I could cry,” she said with a warm smile. “It means a lot to me. I built this team from the ground up, so leaving it makes me wanna cry — but I’m proud! I’m proud I’m leaving it in the right hands of my new co-captains.”
“They work hard. They love the game, first of all,” said Morgan Park coach Anton Collins. “They’re buddies, they’re leaders of the team, they’re seniors and they’re graduating. They’re my leaders! When everything goes crazy, they hold it together…They were here freshman year when they could barely get five people to bowl. They kept fighting and they kept fighting, and here they are.”
Collins drilled one principle into the minds of his bowlers all season long: “Trust,” he said. “Trust the process. Trust your teammates. Trust the ball. Just because you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. You got a team behind you.”
The Mustangs have an abundance of support outside of their teammates as well. Morgan Park had the largest crowd of any team at Waveland this weekend, full of parents shouting ‘I know her’, waving orange pom-poms and holding up periscopes to watch each bowler through their sea of supporters.
“It makes us feel extremely confident knowing that we have people behind us,” Tasker-Lewis said. “Even when we don’t strike or spare, we still have a group of people that are here to support us. It hasn’t been like this forever. This is actually our second year actually having a crowd, so it feels amazing to have people come out to see the girls bowling team.”
“That support is what makes everything for these kids,” Collins said. “They may forget that they won the city championship today, but they’ll never forget the feeling of having support. That’s so important.”
Tasker-Lewis rolled a total of 1,112 pins on Saturday, just 23 behind second-place finisher Allison Rutkowski of Taft.
“It’s an accomplishment,” said Rutkowski, who placed third in 2024. “I just think I’ve improved a lot since last year. I’m picking up more of my spares. I’m also not getting upset. My emotions used to get the best of me.”
The Eagles placed second as a team, rolling a combined total of 4,937 pins, followed by Lane Tech’s 4,225 in third place.
“There’s definitely a lot of sportsmanship on our team,” Rutkowski said. “We’re not rooting against each other to do bad just to do good yourself. We’re more so worried about doing good as a team and improving as a team than we are as individuals.”
This is Rutkowski’s second appearance on the city podium in her two years of high school bowling. She’s been hitting the lanes since she was four-years-old and says she isn’t fazed by the pressure of these high-level competitions. A mantra from the boys bowling coach at Taft keeps her level headed throughout games: “It’s not about how you start, it’s about how you finish.”
Her return to the podium isn’t the only bowling achievement that Rutkowski is set on revisiting this year.
The Eagle is proud of having been the only CPS girls bowler to make it to the state’s final weekend last season.
“I think I have a good chance of doing that [again], especially with my coaches. They’re great coaches,” Rutkowksi shared.
She hopes her postseason success will inspire other young female CPL athletes to realize that they, too, are, ‘capable of doing something that they didn’t think they could do.’
Photos by Andrew Rosenthal/OSA
