Drury Bowlers Aiming for Third State Title

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — In baseball, get three strikes in a row, and you're out.

In bowling, get three strikes in a row, and it's a turkey.

In any sport, get three state titles in a row, and it's a dynasty.

The Drury High School Blue Devils club bowling team will look to cement its place as a dynasty when it rolls into Great Barrington's Cove Lanes on Saturday afternoon for the Massachusetts High School Championships.

The Blue Devils won its first state title two years ago in Gardner and defended their crown last year in the Worcester suburb of Auburn.

This year, the reigning Berkshire County champions get to go for a "three-peat" in the familiar South County venue.

The state championships actually include two days of competition: a team championship on Saturday starting at 4 p.m. and the individual competition on Sunday at 11 a.m.

The Blue Devils are building their dynasty with dedication and hard work all year round, according to coach Steve Cote.

"One of the big things that helped us step up this year is we have two kids who joined [two years ago] as sophomores and one last year as an eighth-grader," Cote said. "[Seniors] Jake Boillat and Matt Vachereau ended up falling in love with the game and bowled all summer long. When the high school season started, their average was way up."

Boillat's average rose by about 20 pins this season. Vachereau's was up by an astounding 40 pins, and Yeaton's average rose about 30 pins to just shy of 200, Cote said.

"Those three guys — the step from last season to this season was huge in our success," Cote said. "My son Tyler and Kayla [Field], everyone knew those two. They came up through the junior league and the house league.

"What Jake, Matt and Zach did this year really surprised a lot of people in how their games stepped up."

Throw in eighth-grader Nick Johnson, and the Blue Devils were a force to be reckoned with this winter.

Drury compiled an 81 percent winning percentage in the dual match season with a per game team average of 967 that was 58 pins better than second-place Taconic. Cote, Boillat and Eaton had three of the top five scratch series in the county, with Cote's 515 edging out St. Joseph's Jordan Kinnas by one pin.

Last weekend, Drury won the county championship at Ken's Bowl in Pittsfield.

The high school bowling season runs from the first week in December until the second weekend in March, and the Berkshire County league has nine teams, including two from Drury: the Blue Devils and White Devils.

The high school team practices once a week on Thursdays at Greylock Bowl & Golf, which helps the Devils keep costs down by donating lane time. All the bowlers in the high school program also participate in Greylock's house league, Steve Cote said.

"I typically go down and help them a little on Saturday morning," he said. "These kids have been bowling for years. This group has the basics down. When I get them it's basically tweaking and talking about how to adjust when we go to different houses in Pittsfield and Great Barrington."

As a club sport, there are some challenges Drury faces that varsity teams do not, but Cote said it is manageable. It helped this year that he had a lot of seniors with their driver's licenses to help with transportation, and parents and grandparents are very supportive of the players' endeavors.

And even without varsity status, the Devils still get support from their school.

"Unfortunately, they can't help us monetarily all the time, but when our uniforms were ragged and seven or eight years old, they were were able to help us find funds to get new shirts for the team," Cote said. "They try to help where they can."