There’s one stop left for the Boardman boys bowling team, and it’s the same as Boardman’s girls, who rolled on Friday in the Division I state tournament in Columbus.

The boys team takes the lanes today at Wayne Webb’s Columbus Bowl in an effort to bring home some hardware.

“We’re comfortable, optimistic and nervous,” Spartans coach Kevin Randolph said. “We want to put our best foot forward. We’ve seen the shot (in Columbus) watching the girls play, so we’re gonna be making some adjustments for balls, everything like that, and see what’s gonna happen. Right now, we feel good going into it.”

Those adjustments include accounting for terrain. While their home lanes are a different material than they’ll be on in Columbus, they’re linked similarly enough to where they’ll play similarly as well.

“We’ve been practicing at our place,” Randolph said. “They’ve been on wood, so it plays a little bit differently and everything. We were comfortable being at our place that’s actually linked in the pattern a little bit, to make it play more similar to what’s going to be down here, so we’re getting comfortable with everything.”

Going into today’s competition, the goal is simple. Walk out with hardware.

“We’ve gotten this far,” Randolph said. “We did well in sectionals, we did well in districts. The talent is there. We know we can do it. It’s just dependent on who we get to show up and keep everyone’s head level with everything.

“We’ve been comfortable. It’s just trying to keep them calm and relaxed as you get ready to start tomorrow.”

Senior Jacob Burkey has been leading the way for Boardman, rolling an average of 203 on the season. Joe Taraszewski is right behind him with a 196.

“Joe’s been shooting well,” Randolph said. “The past couple weeks his game has been coming together. He has started to improve and to get more consistent.”

Rounding out the team are junior Rees Beckman, averaging a 190; sophomore Daniel Enright rolling a 190; junior Landon Bryant with a 180, and sophomore Spencer Fernholz, who is rolling a 163.

With none of the team bowling at state previously, Randolph is a little worried about nerves getting the best of his team. But he has faith they can keep calm when it counts.

“I am a little bit because none of them have been before,” he said. “They’re going to be nervous the first time you sit up there, but we’re just going to keep talking them down, trying to keep them calm, try to keep them relaxed. That’s the biggest thing. Just trying to keep them focused.”

Going in, the message is simple. Focus on yourselves and whatever happens, happens.

“Don’t worry about everybody else,” Randolph said. “Worry about what you’re doing and see what happens when the chips fall where they lie. We’ll see what happens.”

One thing that’s helped with the team’s focus is inconvenience.

On the way to the district tournament, the team was stuck in a traffic jam. Instead of dwelling on and stressing about the upcoming match, they spent that time in traffic relaxing and talking with each other.

That helped the Spartans when it counted as Boardman rolled a 4,334, placing second.

Boardman gets things started today with the qualifying round at 10:45 a.m. The top eight teams advance to the championship tournament held in the afternoon.