On Day 1 of their debuts at the Youth Bowling Council Canadian championships in Edmonton, Vernon's Lukas Rachwalski turned to his playing partner and cousin, Colton Dranchuk, and said prior to their first game, "Dude, we're at the national finals." They won the first five of their six games on opening day.
On Day 2, Rachwalski said to his cousin after starting with three straight losses, "This is a memory we're going to have for the rest of our lives." The B.C. champs won the next six in a row.
You can now add to that memory two gold medals, and a third to their coach Kara Kazimer, as the Vernon cousins captured the city's first-ever national bowling title, winning the senior boys division at the Bonnie Doon Bowling Lanes.
"They both were really strong, and they kept each other up throughout the tournament," said Kazimer. "They both did so well. If one was down, the other was up, like they were a strong dream team."
The B.C. champions were in a pool of eight, and played each team three times over the course of the three-day tournament. Dranchuk and Rachwalski finished with 14 points (one point for each win), one more than Quebec, and two ahead of the bronze medalists, Northern Ontario.
To avoid a potential tie-breaker for the gold medal, the cousins needed to win their last game. Coach Kazimer asked the boys for a strong start instead of a late come-from-behind rally to save her heart palpitations.
Rachwalski responded by rolling nine consecutive strikes to start their contest. He left a corner pin standing with his first ball in the 10th frame, missed the pin with his second ball, but got it on the final roll for a 401 game. It was one of three 400 contests in the entire YBC Canadian championships, singles and doubles, and good for a $100 scholarship for Rachwalski.
"Lukas was in the zone," said Kazimer. "When he was hitting his sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth strikes, he was just up there, roll, and gone. He didn't overthink things. It was fantastic to watch."
Dranchuk rolled a 227 in that final game, and finished the 21 games with a 226 average. His tournament high score was a 287 in Game 11. Rachwalski rolled a 257 average for the tournament, and added four 300-plus games to go along with the 401, including a 377 in Game 15.
The talented pair are still early in their YBC Senior Division careers. Dranchuk just finished his first season, Rachwalski completed his second.
Besides their talent, the coach credits lucky pieces of clothing for the team's 2024-25 success.
"We had two pairs of matching socks," said Kazimer. "One from the zones that got us through provincials, and the new lucky socks I bought for nationals. We wore one pair each day and in the last day mixed and matched."
The national champions receive a big purple and gold banner that will hang at Lincoln Lanes. Longtime co-proprietors Sandi and Ivan Soroka, who sold the bowling business to a pair of businessmen from Golden May 1, celebrated the first days of their retirement by heading to Edmonton to cheer on the Vernon bowlers.
Lincoln Lanes has records of bowlers competing at national finals dating back to 1965, and while there have been silver- and bronze-medal winners, there has not been a gold-medal claimed by anyone from Vernon until now.
