VOORHEESVILLE — The Voorheesville Blackbird bowling team finished in the middle of the pack this season with a 6-11-1 record in the Colonial Council.
"I thought we would be a bit better than that," said Voorheesville Coach Jim Duncan. "The guys averages were down a little bit. Mike Tesch only averaged 200 and Charles Lansburg had a 194 or 195. We had eight seniors and a couple of guys that averaged 190 last year were at only 180 this year."

The eight seniors on the team this winter were Kevin Bub, Robert Flynn, Edward Labshere, Lansburg, Justin Lupien, Allan Proskin, William Shutter, Tesch, and Chris Thomas.
"They struggled this year," Duncan said. "They had good days and they had bad days."

Rebecca Duncan, the coach’s daughter, had a more consistent average during the season. She bowled a 185 for most of the season.

Duncan, a ninth-grader, was joined on the team by classmate Kevin Tesch, and juniors Samuel Musella and Andrew Dowen.
"We’ll struggle to have a team next year," Coach Duncan said. "We have two juniors and Rebecca and Kevin. We’ll be looking for people; we’ll be down a bit.
"Schools like Lansingburgh and Cohoes — inner-city schools — they’re still into it," Duncan said. "Out here in the country, the kids are tougher to get"Next year will be interesting. I’m coaching football and I’ll tell those kids that I need bowlers."

Duncan was hoping the seniors would go out with a better season.
"Honestly, I was expecting more out of them with all those seniors back," he said. "We lost Dan Healy to the basketball team. I thought we could do a little better than we did. At sectionals, we were eighth out of 24 teams, but 600 pins behind [winner] Mechanicville.
"In the league, we had two great matches with Mechanicville," Duncan added. "They shot an all-time school record against us up there. They had four kids that shot a total of 700-plus pins that day. We had one in the 700’s and a bunch in the mid-600’s. You can’t complain with that."

Duncan said that he won’t miss just losing the seniors but he’ll miss who they are and what they accomplished.
"They’ll be tough to lose," Duncan said. "Justin, Allan, and Charles have been together since the eighth or ninth grades. They won sectionals, finished second, fourth, and eighth. I can’t ask for more from those kids.
"Last year, we had the lead [at sectionals] all day," Duncan added, "until Canajoharie got hot and went crazy. They are really great kids. I worked with them in football and bowling all this time. It is tough to lose these kind of kids."