COLORADO SPRINGS — The bowling team at Sand Creek High School is gearing up for some major competition as they will soon be competing at the U.S. High School Bowling National Championship in Ohio.

“It’s just a normal competition to me,” Sand Creek High School Senior, Aidan Flores, said. “I mean, I probably will get nervous, but not as bad, not as much as I should.”

Aidan Flores said when bowling he tells himself to “hit my mark and don’t mess up.“

A parent of one of the team members said they are the only high school in Colorado competing at this national level.

“Nerves, the amount of people that are going to be there, college scouts that are going to be there,” Sand Creek High School Sophomore, Kanyen Hermanstorfer, said. “It’s a lot different than what you get with the people that you bowl with in your state.”

Chris Harnish, Head Coach of the Sand Creek bowling team, shared the importance of the young talent on this team.

“It’s not a sport that’s growing, it’s a sport that’s declining,” Harnish said. “So, the more people we can get involved, the more people we can help grow, the better off we’re going to be in long term.”

Harnish leads the team in a cheer during practice.

When it comes to the national championship, it will be a full-circle moment for Harnish in leading the team.

“The good part about that is it’s in the town I grew up in,” Harnish said. “I grew up 30 minutes from Dayton, Ohio, so, it’s a homecoming for me. I’ve bowled a lot of tournaments and other events in that bowling center. So, these kids get to experience the same bowling centers that I’ve experienced.”

The five-member team showed off their skills on practice Monday afternoon.

At practice on Monday, players were cheering each other on along with family members sitting in support.

“Our team dynamic is, we have fun,” Flores said. “If we miss, we pick each other up, so we kind of try not to keep ourselves down. We try to keep each other up so we can bowl good.”

Each player is called to the sport for a unique reason. For Hermanstorfer, bowling is in his blood.

“A lot of it’s like when I was younger, I got to bowl with my great-grandpa and just made it special for me and made me want to keep going,” said Hermanstorfer.

The team is getting ready for the big competition by practicing twice a week.

“We finished our competitions already, so we already been to competitions already went to state,” Flores said. “So now we’re just practicing every week, every two times a week.”

The team is practicing twice a week to get ready for the National Championship in June.

The team will host a Bowl-a-Thon event on Saturday, May 6 at King Pin to help fundraise for the big competition.

“So, we’re having a bowl-a-thon Saturday here at King Pin,” Harnish said. “Registration starts at 12:30, bowling starts at 1. We’re going to have all kinds of raffle prizes, bowling balls, gift baskets, things like that that are going to help raise money to send these kids to Dayton and alleviate some of the extra costs that is and hopefully we’ll have a really good time.”