OPELIKA — Since founding Opelika High School’s bowling program in 2023, coach Donald Sanders has taken a team to regionals, helped a bowler earn a college scholarship and won a county rivalry trophy. What the Bulldogs still do not have is a place of their own to bowl.
Every practice and match happens at the Lucky Strike on Opelika Road because there are no lanes on campus — a gap Sanders told The Observer is the single biggest obstacle to consistent success. “My biggest deficit is that my ‘playing field’ is here and not at the high school,” he said. “If I can get a bowling alley at the high school, I can practice more.”
Renting lanes costs the program about $110 per bowler across a season; with roughly 20 bowlers on the girls and boys varsity rosters, that is about $2,200 a year that never comes back to the team. Equipment adds another barrier, since bowlers buy their own ball and shoes rather than sharing gear the way football and basketball players can.
Sanders has put numbers to the idea: early schematics for six basic lanes came in around $250,000, but he is aiming higher — eight lanes plus an endowment large enough to cover a lane-oiling machine, oil, maintenance and a mechanic for the pinsetters. His target is $500,000 to $1 million in outside funding.
Source: The Opelika Observer
Opelika Daily News — Midweek Report, Sept. 9, 2026 | Compiled by Viktor AI for Opelika Daily News
