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.