By Chris Basnett — For the Nebraska School Activities Association
The second winter championship of the season gets underway Monday as the 2026 NSAA State Bowling Championship begin in Lincoln.
Eight teams and 30 individuals will compete on both the boys and girls side in each class. In individual competitions, the 30 qualifiers will bowl four qualifying games with the top eight advancing to the championship bracket.
The competition will be held at Sun Valley Lanes in Lincoln. Class B boys and girls will decide their individual champions Monday, followed by the Class B team championships on Tuesday.
The Class A team championships are scheduled for Wednesday, with the Class A singles titles up for grabs on Thursday.
Singles competition on Monday and Thursday begins at 9 a.m. Team competition on Tuesday and Wednesday starts at 8 a.m., with the boys team finals scheduled for 7 p.m., and the girls team finals to follow.
The boys and girls team finals in both classes will be broadcast by Nebraska Public Media.
State championship information can be found at the following links: NSAA Bowling Championships HQ | Girls Team Brackets | Boys Team Brackets
Bowling 101
Here is a quick rundown on how state champions will be determined.
Singles: A singles champion will be determined in Class A and B for boys and girls. Thirty individuals in each field qualified; five from each of six districts. They will bowl four games of qualifying at state to advance to the 8-player championship bracket. In bracket play, each match is a two-game series to determine the winner.
Team: Bowling may be the ultimate team sport. Baker format matches will be played to determine the state champion. In this format, teams have five players who bowl two frames each in each game. All matches are a best-of-five format.
BOYS: Top-seeded Fremont tries to deny a Columbus 3-peat
Number one is nice. But it doesn’t mean a whole lot once things get going.
That’s the view of J.J. Mastny, the coach of top-seeded Fremont, as the beginning of the Class A boys state tournament closes in.
Just ask last year’s Tigers about the value of the No. 1 seed. Fremont won its first two matches at the 2025 state tournament before falling twice to fifth-seeded Bellevue East and coming up short of the finals.
“It really doesn’t (matter). Once you’re there anybody can win it. And the way the format is, with it being a sprint instead of a marathon, it’s more of a feather in your cap sort of thing,” Mastny said. “We try not to place too much emphasis on it now that it’s over it. You still have to go out there, and you’ve got to get the job done.”
Columbus has gotten it done two consecutive years, winning titles in 2024 and 2025. The Discoverers, seeded fourth this year, and Fremont could meet up in a second round match that in many years would be state championship-worthy.
Fremont is trying to reach the top for the first time since 2021, the first year the NSAA sanctioned bowling. The Tigers also made the finals in 2023, falling to Grand Island. An experienced group has powered Fremont to a 23-3 record that includes just one loss to Class A competition — an upset against Lincoln Northeast in the Heartland Athletic Conference Tournament that was avenged later that same day.
“They’ve shown a tremendous amount of poise and maturity in tough situations,” Mastny said. “It’s just their ability to win the long game so far. They understand that, given enough time, they’re going to figure things out and they’re eventually going to get the job done in the shorter formats.”
Fremont rolled through its district with the top four individual finishers, led by Gehrig Kuddes’ 670 series that was 74 pins better than second-place teammate Andrew Wusk.
But the state tournament is a different animal, Mastny said.
“There’s a lot of teams that can win it, and every team has a couple guys that are just fantastic players,” Mastny said. “That’s the big thing — most of the games are going to come down to the end, and the four and five guys have got to get the job done.”
Millard West’s Anden Sutter returns as the defending individual champion, and Lincoln East’s Alex Starks, who rolled a 300 game on January 22, is also in the individual field.
Last year’s finalists return in 2025 as the top two seeds on the boys side as Lincoln Pius X and Wayne lead the state tournament field.
Pius X (24-4) defeated Wayne 3-1 in last year’s championship final and earned the top seed in this year’s field on the strength of a schedule that included just one loss to Class B competition, in the Bolts’ season-opener against Elkhorn North. Elkhorn North (25-2) is the No. 3 seed at state.
Wayne (24-3), which has made the championship round in three consecutive state tournaments and won a title in 2023, had four of the top five individual finishers at the B-5 district tournament, and comes to state with a six-match winning streak that includes a win over Class A No. 1 seed Fremont. The Blue Devils also boast the defending Class B individual champion in Dylan Jensen, who was third at districts.
Also at state is Omaha Skutt and Austin Hansen. Hansen rolled a perfect game on January 22, the same day as Lincoln East’s Alex Starks also had a 300, and Skutt had three of the top four finishers at the B-2 district meet.
And if you need an underdog, look no further than Waverly. The eighth-seeded Vikings (5-19) picked up two of their five wins in the B-2 district tournament, upsetting Omaha Skutt 3-1 in the finals, to advance to state. Waverly started the year 0-13.
Class A Boys District Team Champs: Fremont, Grand Island, Omaha Westside, Millard South, Kearney, Norfolk.
Class A Boys Individual District Champs: Gehrig Kuddes (Fremont), Ramsey Rathjen (Grand Island), Jackson Wordekemper (Omaha Westside), Nathaniel Nattrass (Millard South), Roman Long (Columbus), Anden Sutter (Millard West).
Class B Boys District Team Champs: Lincoln Pius X, Waverly, Elkhorn North, Lincoln Standing Bear, Wayne, Lincoln Northwest.
Class B Boys Individual District Champs: Kayne Gratzfeld (Hartington-Newcastle), Bryson Carmichael (Omaha Skutt Catholic), Callico Thomas-Reinertson (Lexington), Cooper Anderson (Norfolk Catholic), Aiden Petersen (Wayne), Lucian Gunn (Seward).
GIRLS: Fremont seeks to regain crown
After its reign ended at last year’s state tournament, the Fremont girls team will try to climb back to the top with an experienced squad that earned the No. 1 seed in this year’s Class A bracket.
The Tigers, who won back-to-back titles in 2023 and 2024, got to state again last season but came up short of the finals with a largely new lineup.
This year, the bulk of that lineup returned.
“I could mostly see this coming with as many pieces returning as we had, and that was the big question mark going into last season — what were we going to do after losing all the firepower from (2024)?” Fremont coach J.J. Mastny said. “I think our girls have kind of struggled to live up to it from last year, simply because I think they may have surprised themselves (in 2025) more than anything else.”
Midway through this season, Mastny said, the Tigers were “kind of questioning whether they belonged” during a stretch of three losses in six matches.
But a seven-match winning streak coming into state, during which the Tigers have lost just four total games, has rejuvenated the team’s confidence.
“They’ve really relied upon their chemistry, and they made it a goal for themselves to really kind of come together as a team,” Mastny said. “And as the season has progressed, they’ve really started to get a little more comfortable in their own skin and in playing their own games.”
It will hardly be a cakewalk for Fremont, or anyone else.
Second-seeded Grand Island (24-3) has made three consecutive state finals since bowling split into two classes starting in 2023. The Islanders lost to Fremont in the 2023 and 2024 finals before falling to Norfolk in last year’s title match, and heads to state this year with a 24-3 record that includes a split of two matches with Fremont, an 18-match winning streak, and a Heartland Athletic Conference title.
“Grand Island is the one that we circle,” Mastny said. “If it’s not one of us, it’s the other a lot of times.”
Grand Island had the top five individual finishers at the A-3 district, with the top four all finishing within 22 pins of each other while each clearing 500 for their series.
Another HAC program, Norfolk, has wins over both Fremont and Grand Island and heads to Sun Valley Lanes as the No. 4 seed. The Panthers have beaten Fremont twice in three matches, meaning a potential second-round match between the squads would be full of fireworks.
A new individual champion is assured after the graduation of defending champion Taryn Stern of Omaha Westview. The Wolverines (23-3) will be a factor in the team race, too, and are one half of perhaps the most intriguing first-round matchup, taking on Millard South.
The No. 3 seed Millard South and No. 6 Westview haven’t faced each other previously this season while combining for a 43-4 record. Millard South’s only loss in a 20-1 campaign was to Omaha Westside.
Class B: New team champ guaranteed
There will be a new team champion in Class B girls after defending title winner Northwest didn’t qualify for this year’s event.
Instead Wayne, which won four consecutive championships before Northwest broke the string last year, will try to get back on top. The Blue Devils (21-5) enter as the No. 5 seed in the bracket with just two losses to Class B competition — both to Humphrey-Lindsay, the No. 8 seed.
The bracket appears to be wide open. Top-seeded Waverly (25-4) has lost to No. 4 seed Lincoln Pius X and No. 2 seed Elkhorn North this year, in addition to having a pair of defeats to Class A No. 1 seed Fremont. Every team has at least four losses, with seven of the eight having five or more, and seven of the eight teams having never won a state championship.
Lincoln Pius X (19-9) had three of the top four finishers in the B-2 district meet, including district champion Sydney Beckman, and will try to add a trophy to the case just as the Thunderbolt boys did last season.
Defending individual champion Lauren Moore of Arapahoe also returns after winning the B-3 district meet. Moore, a senior, has a state title, two district championships, and two district runner-up finishes on her ledger.
Class A Girls District Team Champs: Fremont, Millard South, Grand Island, Norfolk, Omaha Westview, Papillion-La Vista South.
Class A Girls Individual District Champs: Kaylee Halladay (Fremont), Mae Martin (Millard South), Brinley Rathjen (Grand Island), Bailey Secrest (Bellevue West), Kate Alley (Omaha Westview), Audrey Belfiore (Papillion-La Vista South).
Class B Girls District Team Champs: Waverly, Lincoln Pius X, Elkhorn, Elkhorn North, Omaha Skutt Catholic, Humphrey-Lindsay.
Class B Girls Individual District Champs: Ve’Anna Dotson (Waverly), Sydney Beckman (Lincoln Pius X), Lauren Moore (Arapahoe), Trinity McConnell (York), Desirae Hartford Rivera (Northwest), Gracyn Johnson (Wayne).
Chris Basnett is a freelance writer based in Lincoln. He has covered prep and college sports for more than 20 years and most recently was the assistant sports editor at the Lincoln Journal Star. He currently provides content for the Harvest Sports Newsletter.