Championship resiliency amid travel chaos helps Shocker bowling earn Final Four berth
Less than 72 hours before Aleesha Oden released the fateful strike that sealed a Final Four trip, the Wichita State women’s bowling star was sleeping on the floor of an airport.
The Shockers made history this past weekend by winning the Lansing Regional championship to advance to the national semifinals of the NCAA Tournament in their first season as a NCAA-sponsored sport.
The achievement alone was impressive, even for a program that had a record 11 national championships at the club level. But it becomes even more impressive considering the travel nightmare the team had to endure before its NCAA Tournament debut.
“We just had to keep believing in karma,” WSU head coach Holly Harris said. “We just had to keep faith that good luck was coming our way. It couldn’t be all bad all the time.”
The saga began last Wednesday when severe weather in the Midwest wreaked havoc on air travel. Harris said the team was delayed for three hours leaving Wichita and when they finally landed in Chicago at Gate L-23, they could see their connecting flight to Lansing pulling out at Gate L-24.
The travel party of a little more than a dozen members managed to book a new flight to Lansing that evening, but after several delays, it was eventually canceled. Like so many stranded passengers, they tried to book a hotel room for that night but every hotel they called was sold out.
They finally found a hotel with enough rooms to accommodate them, but by the time their Ubers arrived, the hotel apologized and informed them that they had given their rooms away.
“Luckily, the only person who cried was me,” Harris said with a laugh.
It was well past midnight at that point, so the team decided the only option was for them to Uber back to Chicago O’Hare Airport, check back in through security, then find a place to try to sleep for a few hours.
Because there were so many canceled flights, the chairs near boarding gates were filled. That meant the only place for the team to sleep was on the ground in their terminal.
“It was so crazy, but there was nothing any of us could do about it,” Oden said. “We knew we were going to wind up in Lansing at some point and we were going to practice and we were going to bowl. We had food in our stomachs and somewhere to sleep, even if it wasn’t the most comfy. It could have been worse.”
Oden’s mindset was shared by her teammates, as the 10 bowlers maintained a relentless optimism throughout the ordeal that astounded Harris, assistant coach Mark Lewis and WSU sports information director Denning Gerig.
Not one of the student-athletes uttered a single complaint, despite the disjointed travel leading up to the biggest tournament of their lives. In fact, they shared their gratitude with Harris, Lewis and Gerig for helping take care of them through the situation. Instead of viewing it as an inconvenience, Oden said the group thought of the experience as a “team sleepover.”
“The girls took everything in stride and honestly, they handled it better than I did,” Harris said. “When something bad happened, they were just like, ‘Oh, OK. It’s more time for us to make a Tik Tok.’ You don’t often get a women’s team where everybody genuinely cares and loves one another. This is a special, special group and their love for each other is what really sets them apart.”
On just a few hours rest, the team managed to find a flight early Thursday to Grand Rapids, which was about a 1-hour bus ride away from Lansing. But upon arrival, WSU received one final bit of bad news: the rental car agency had given away their rental cars.
By the time WSU finally arrived in Lansing, the team had completed a 26-hour journey. And by the time they checked into their hotel, practiced and ate dinner, there was not much more than 12 hours before the team would bowl in its first NCAA Tournament match.
“I’m an eternal optimist, so I just kept believing that some good karma was coming our way,” Harris said. “But bad thing after bad thing kept happening and there was a little bit of anxiety and some frustration that things weren’t going the way I wanted them to. I felt like I was going to lose it and I eventually did, but I was worried that the girls were going to lose it too and I was nervous for what was going to happen. I was nervous if it started to not go our way (Friday), then they would think, ‘Oh, here’s another thing that’s not going our way.’”
That never happened.
WSU looked every bit like a national championship contender in its NCAA debut with three straight sweeps, including a dominant opening-round performance against Felician (N.J.) and then two straight victories over Vanderbilt to win the regional title and secure a spot in the Final Four.
The only close portion came during the Baker series against Vanderbilt the second time, as WSU clung to an 11-pin lead entering the final game. But four straight strikes from the fifth to eighth frames gave the Shockers separation, then Oden sealed the victory with a double strike in the 10th frame.
“We’re just a really mentally tough team,” Oden said. “We always do hard things, whether it’s up against a tough opponent or being a student-athlete or going through travel issues, we always find a way to do hard things. We’re trained to be tough in those situations when it’s easy to fall apart. At the end of the day, we’re just throwing shots down the lane.”
WSU’s squad of Beau Anderson, Chloe Ciecko, Sara Duque Jimenez, Morgan Kline, Oden, Mary Orf, Madi Phillips, Piper Reams, Paige Wagner and Ashtyn Woods will face top-seeded Jacksonville State, the defending NCAA champions, on Friday in Las Vegas. Nebraska and Youngstown State are on the other side of the bracket.
The Shockers are the No. 4 seed, but have good reason to believe they might be the team to beat. After all, WSU just won the Conference USA tournament, which included Jacksonville State and Youngstown State, and beat the defending national champions two straight times to claim the conference title.
After overcoming as much adversity as WSU did just to reach the Final Four, Harris said she believes now more than ever that good karma is coming the Shockers’ way.
“I just have an immense amount of pride in this group,” Harris said. “I don’t have kids, but I imagine this is what a mother feels like when they see their kids do cool things.
“This was a reminder to ourselves that just because something is hard doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
This story was originally published April 7, 2025 at 5:03 AM.
.jpg)