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The ����ԭ�� men’s club bowling team has gotten off to a terrific start in the 2021–22 season. After eight events, the team is ranked 12th in the country on collegebowling.com.

“The men’s team is for real,” said men’s head bowling coach Jeff Fleck, who co-founded the program and has coached the men’s and women’s clubs since 2005. “We’re back as good as we’ve ever been.”

With already one tournament win this fall, at the American Heartland Bowling Association Event, the men’s team is bowling like a well-tuned machine with hopes to carry their success into the spring.

“We don’t have a great team unless everybody is working together,” said Jonathan Ciero, a left-handed bowler and senior mechanical engineering major. Ciero is also the president of the Student Government Association.

“We’ve never had a bowler as Student Government president,” said Fleck. “I couldn’t be more proud of him.”

Ciero has been bowling since junior high school. He describes his teammates as family and uses their time together to discuss their college experiences, hoping to make their time at ����ԭ�� all it can be.

“Jonathan does a pretty good job of bringing the team together,” Andrew Bleakley, bowler and senior majoring in biomedical engineering.

Ciero has one perfect game under his belt and has won two individual tournaments while bowling for the Raiders.

“He’s left-handed and sometimes he doesn’t get the looks that the right-handers do, but he never quits,” said Fleck.

After attending a national bowling tournament in high school, Ciero met the Raider coaching staff, which led to a campus visit to ����ԭ��.

“I knew right then and there that I was coming to ����ԭ��,” he said.

Both the men’s and women’s teams have experienced success in recent years. The women’s team has qualified for the National Bowling Tournament in seven of the last 10 years and finished the 2019-20 season ranked 14th in the country.

Both clubs will be in action on Jan. 15-16 when they travel to Addison, Illinois, for the Kegel Midwest Classic.

“We’ve got a great program that’s bringing kids to the school,” said Fleck.