Nebraska Cornhuskers Bowling
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The Nebraska Cornhuskers bowling team competes as part of
NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest division of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athlet ...
, representing the
University of Nebraska–Lincoln The University of Nebraska–Lincoln (Nebraska, NU, or UNL) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Lincoln, Nebraska, United States. Chartered in 1869 by the Nebraska Legislature as part of the M ...
as an independent. The program was founded as a club team in 1983 and became a varsity sport in 1997. Nebraska is the most successful collegiate program in bowling history, winning eleven national championships and qualifying for every NCAA championship. Most of this success came under Bill Straub, who founded the team in 1989 and coached for thirty-six years. The team has been coached by longtime assistant Paul Klempa since Straub's retirement in 2019.


History

Nebraska's bowling program began in 1983 under head coach Bill Straub, who led the team to Women's International Bowling Congress-sanctioned national titles in 1991 and 1995. Women's bowling became an official varsity sport at NU in 1997, though its two-time club champion men's program did not, and the school granted Jennifer Daugherty the first full scholarship in collegiate bowling history. Nebraska won three more WIBC titles before the NCAA sanctioned its first bowling tournament in 2004. The Cornhuskers won the first two NCAA championships under Straub, who retired in 2019 as a ten-time national champion and was elected to the
United States Bowling Congress The United States Bowling Congress (USBC) is a sports membership organization dedicated to ten-pin bowling in the United States of America, United States. It was formed in 2005 by a merger of the American Bowling Congress—the original codifier ...
Collegiate Hall of Fame in 2025. The program has never been ranked lower than seventh. In 2019, Straub retired and longtime assistant Paul Klempa was named head coach. Klempa led NU to its eleventh national title in 2021.


Conference affiliations

*Independent (1997–present)


Coaches


Coaching history


Coaching staff


Championships and awards


Team national championships

* WIBC: 1991, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001 *
NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...
: 2004, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2021


Individual awards

*National bowler of the year: Kim Berke (1992), Diandra Hyman (2000), Shannon Pluhowsky (2001, 2004, 2005), Lindsay Baker (2006), Amanda Burgoyne (2007), Cassandra Leuthold (2010), Lizabeth Kuhlkin (2015), Raquel Orozco (2020), Crystal Elliot (2021), Jillian Martin (2025) * NCAA championship most outstanding bowler: Shannon Pluhowsky (2004), Amanda Burgoyne (2005), Cassandra Leuthold (2009), Lizabeth Kuhlkin (2013), Julia Bond (2015), Crystal Elliott (2021) *National coach of the year: Bill Straub (2005, 2013, 2017)


NCAA champions

*Amanda Burgoyne – 2005 *Julia Bond – 2016 *Kelly Belzeski – 2017


First-team All-Americans

Twenty Nebraska bowlers have combined for thirty-nine first-team All-America honors, in addition to sixteen second-team and thirteen third-team selections. The National Tenpin Coaches Association replaced the National Collegiate Bowling Coaches Association as the primary selector of All-America teams in 2004.


Seasons


Notes


References

{{University of Nebraska–Lincoln Nebraska Cornhuskers bowling