The victory is believed to be the first college national championship won by any team in any sport during its inaugural year of competition.

In their very first season, the Jacksonville State University women’s bowling team are NCAA national champions.

In a battle between the nation’s top two teams (the 12^th time they had met this season), the top-ranked and top-seeded Gamecocks (103-23) found themselves in a 3-2 hole behind No. 2 Arkansas State with their backs against the wall.

The Gamecocks stepped up in front of a national television audience and a packed house at Detroit’s historic Thunderbowl Lanes to take down Arkansas State for the title.

“The girls were incredible tonight,” head coach and former Team USA member Shannon O’Keefe said during a news conference Saturday night following the victory. “Arkansas State bowled amazing. We knew they were going to push us. They have pushed us and gone toe-to-toe with us all year, and you just have to applaud them for their efforts.”

The Red Wolves definitely pushed Jax State, reversing momentum after a back-and-forth start to win the fourth and fifth games to take a 3-2 lead and pull to within one win of their first national title.

It didn’t faze the Gamecocks, however. They settled in and battled back to win the final two games, bowling a 237 in game four and a 255 in game seven to bring home Jacksonville State’s first Division I national championship and the first by any Gamecock team since 1992.

Crystal Elliott shows her passion as part of the Jacksonville State University women’s bowling team. (Brandon Phillips)

“I feel like we’re like a broken record because we talk about it all the time, but to be patient, dig your heels in and just execute has really been our motto all year,” O’Keefe said. “To watch our girls do what they did tonight was just awesome. To bowl a 250 to win the national championship is pretty sweet.”

The team’s national championship is unprecedented in many ways. It’s the first for Jax State since moving up to Division I from Division II after the 1992-93 academic year, and the first since the Division II football title in 1992. It’s the first by a Jax State women’s program since back-to-back gymnastics championships in 1984 and 1985.

Perhaps most significant, it’s the first for a first-year bowling program and is believed to be the first in any sport for a team in its inaugural season of competition.

When O’Keefe was named the program’s first coach in May 2023 after winning four national titles at Division II McKendree University in Illinois, she knew securing a national championship at Jax State was a possibility. What she didn’t know was, how successful the program would be so quickly.

“We knew years ago that we wanted to give our girls a Division I experience,” O’Keefe said. “The entire administration just embraced us and believed in us from the very beginning. The overwhelming amount of support that we are getting, not only at the university but in the community, it means something. To be able to bring it home to little, small-town Jacksonville that we have fallen in love with so much, it is just incredible to be able to do that.”

The No. 1, Jacksonville State University women’s bowling team. (Brandon Phillips)

The national championship match was back-and-forth, and it surprised no one when it went to the seventh and deciding game. The Gamecocks bowled six games over 200, starting with a 239-194 win in game one that seemed to set the tone early on.

The Red Wolves answered in the second game, however, edging Jax State by a score of 211-204, using the same lane that put them down a game to tie the match at 1-1.

That lane, the left of the two used in the competition, hosted the winner in the next two games, as well. A 244 from the Gamecocks in the third game and a 221 from the Red Wolves in the fourth took the match into the fifth game knotted at 2-2.

Arkansas State seemed to turn the tide in the fifth game, bowling a 255 to take the first win on lane 12 of Thunderbowl’s Arena and pushing the Gamecocks to the brink of elimination. But the Gamecocks didn’t see it that way. They roared back with a 237 on lane 12 and then chose it for the seventh and deciding game, sealing the national title.

“We most certainly thought the left lane was better to start, because the right lane was a bit tighter down lane,” O’Keefe noted. “As we started to lose the left lane, the right lane became better, so it kind of worked out in our favor that we bowled game six there and had the choice to stay. We knew halfway through game five that we were going to stay if we got to that point.”

The first-year program wasn’t one that lacked experience. Seven transfers, each with at least one national championship under her belt before coming to Jacksonville, and a pair of newcomers joined the O’Keefe’s in Jacksonville. That roster included five seniors, all with a dream to close their careers with a title.

On Saturday night, that dream became a reality for those seniors who made up the Jax State lineup in all seven games. By winning the NCAA Bowling Championship, they finished off their 10^th tournament win of the year and their fourth in a row.

The JSU women’s bowling team have a reason to celebrate. (Brandon Phillips)

The Gamecocks won’t be able to celebrate for long. They have one event remaining in the 2024 season, the USBC’s Intercollegiate Team Championships that starts Wednesday at Kingpin Lanes in Louisville, Kentucky.

To make a donation to the Jacksonville State University Foundation supporting the women’s bowling program, visit jaxstatesports.com and click “Give Now” or text GIVEGAMECOCKS to 91999.

A version of this story first appeared on the Jacksonville State University website.