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About Appeal tribune. (Silverton, Or.) 1999-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 11, 2017)
Sports B1 Appeal Tribune, www.silvertonappeal.com Wednesday, January 11, 2017 Silverton graduates team up again as college bowlers BILL POEHLER STATESMAN JOURNAL Jeffrey Holden and Lucas Ferrando have been friends since they were small children. While their fathers bowled frame af- ter frame at alleys around Salem, the two youngsters would run around, getting into trouble and forging a life-long bond. Fifteen years later they’re college teammates on the bowling team at Cal- umet College of Saint Joseph in Indiana and the two are closer than ever on one of the top teams in the nation. As teammates at Silverton High School in 2012, they both played key roles on the team’s state championship-win- ning bowling team. In December Ferrando, a senior, and Holden, a sophomore, helped Calumet win the Collegiate Shoot-Out in Las Ve- gas. Calumet went 29-1 in the Baker game matches at the tournament and scored 12,445 to beat Webber Interna- tional by 11 pins “It’s funny to think we bowled in Sil- verton together. We won a state champi- onship there,” Ferrando said. “We go out to one of the top teams in the nation for bowling. We kind of took the high school team with us.” The season didn’t start as well as hoped for Calumet. In the second tournament of the sea- son, the Oregon & Black Classic in the middle of October, Calumet placed 15th. For a program accustomed to a high level of success – the team has made the NAIA National Tournament in all 10 years there has been a national tourna- Jeffrey Holden Lucas Ferrando ment – it was less than they expected. As opposed to the national tourna- ment, the Collegiate Shootout included teams from NCAA Division I schools like Wichita State, Arizona State, San Jose State, Nevada-Las Vegas, Fresno State and Washington State. “It started with practice, and then we have a really young team so the older people in our program had to step up and understand college bowling,” Holden said. “I feel like those tournaments (in Las Vegas) were a better representation about the skill level our team is at. Now we’re all on the same page and I think Ve- gas helped give us a better showing of what we can be as a team.” The competition within Calumet’s team to be on the active roster for a spot to compete at tournaments is tough. To determine the players who travel to compete in each tournament, the team holds a series of trials over a week’s time. The competition is so tough to earn a spot on the tournament teams that Fer- rando had made it on for just over half the tournaments this season. That internal competition has been a benefit for Holden. He says that before he came to Calumet he had an average of 201 and now averages 240. “The competition definitely helps be- cause if you start slacking off two days before trials, just a snap of the fingers and you’re off the team,” said Holden, a Computer Information Systems major. Ferrando enrolled at Calumet after graduating from Silverton in 2013. Holden originally was intent on going to bowl in college in Las Vegas after he graduated from Silverton in 2015, but when an aunt and uncle moved back to Oregon, he changed his mind. The first person he contacted was Ferrando, who was then a sophomore at Calumet. Within hours the Calumet coaching staff had contacted him and Holden was on his way to Indiana. “He was great last year being a fresh- man,” said Ferrando, a Business Man- agement major on track to graduate in May. “This year he’s really shown he’s one of the top bowlers on our team. Hav- ing him is definitely a boost to the talent level on our starting team.” Holden’s older brother, Daniel, joined Calumet’s team this year. Daniel Holden is a freshman in col- lege eligibility, but was three years ahead of his younger brother in high school. After graduating from Silverton, he took a gap year then went to college at Chemeketa. Jeffrey Holden tried to convince his brother to come to Calumet when he first did last year, but his brother waited a year. “I think it’s good for both of us be- cause I have family there now so I don’t feel like I’m so far away,” Jeffrey Hold- en said. “I think it’s good for him because I have a little bit of the experience. “It’s definitely been good for all of us.” Contact Bill Poehler at bpoeh- ler@StatesmanJournal.com or follow him on Twitter @bpoehler Families sled Santiam Sno-Park JONATHAN BACH STATESMAN JOURNAL SISTERS – You have to drive more than 80 miles east from Salem to reach one of the closest sno-parks to the state capital, past Detroit Lake and armies of trees dressed in white and green like troops soldiering through the winter. If you pulled into the parking lot of Santiam Sno-Park on Monday, you may have seen Jared Harrison of Salem kick a log back onto his small fire. It did little to beat back the cold there, as temper- atures hovered around 13 degrees. Cold didn't deter families such as Har- rison’s from whizzing down a nearby snowy hill by sled or tube. Seasonal permits for sno-parks like Santiam run $25. It's not far from the roughly 4,800-foot summit of Oregon's Santiam Pass. Aside from the sledding hill, there are two bathrooms and lots of parking spaces. Those spaces were filled with burly SUVs and pickups — and at least one Toyota Prius with chains. Winter conditions made the powder ideal for sledding. Harrison brought his family after snowboarding Hoodoo and ringing in the New Year in Bend. His daughter, Summer, 4, was eager to get out of the nearby car and hit the slopes. Sunday was her first day snow- boarding. Now it was time to sled. Jared, 34, bundled her up. “All this to have her go out for 10 min- utes,” he said. David Rutledge of Salem said goggles were recommended. “Otherwise you have a frozen face,” he said. His family had been there for about an hour and a half. On the hill, one packed-down lane was a straight shot all the way down, whereas another had a jump that made sledders go airborne. Leah Asay of Eugene and her grand- daughter Olivia Gilhuber came speeding down the hill together, though some- where along the way their sled came out from under them. That didn’t stop them going a little farther down or seem to dampen 11-year-old Olivia's enthusiasm. “It was so fun,” she said afterward. Jayden Harrison, 14, shot off the ramp. He went backward over the jump, but reconnected with the ground without falling off his sled and eating snow. The younger Harrison, Jared’s neph- ew, was a man of high speed and few ad- jectives. Asked how he felt about the jump he nailed, he responded straight- forwardly: “Good.” Not everyone was outside. In a two- story Sisters coffee house further down the road, temperatures were comfort- ably warm. People worked on laptops and sipped coffee. Greg and Vivi Ouellette of Bend were just off a cross-country skiing expedi- tion when they stopped to grab a drink. “It was unreal,” Greg said of the pow- der outside. “The conditions were nearly perfect.” Indeed, the trek seemed idyllic. "The sun came through and it was beautiful," Vivi said. They snow-shoed with a man whom Greg said he was vetting for a trip to Mount Denali, the highest mountain in North America that shoots up more than 20,000 feet in Alaska, according to the U.S. National Park Service. It's a far cry PHOTOS BY MOLLY J. SMITH/STATESMAN JOURNAL Salem’s Jayden Harrison, 14, sleds down the large hill at the Santiam Sno-Park. It’s the only tubing and sledding hill in the Santiam Pass area. Olivia Gilhuber, 11, blinks away the snowflakes on her eyelashes at the Santiam Sno-Park. Located near the 4,817-foot summit of the Santiam Pass, the park has a large hill that is popular for sledding. from the Oregon wilderness. "It's all about the right people," he said. "You (don't) have the right people, you shouldn't go." Send questions, comments or news tips to jbach @statesmanjournal.com or 503-399-6714. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanMBach. Cameron Asay has a bumpy landing after flying off a ramp made out of snow. The Asay and Gilhuber families drove out to the Santiam Sno-Park from Eugene for some fun in the snow on the second day of the New Year.