The 2023 high school bowling championships take place this week (Feb 20-22) and on the tournament's first day, one Cedar Falls student made school history. Jackson Satterlee is only a sophomore at Cedar Falls high school and he will now have his name in the school's record books forever. Any time you can add your name to your school's record books, it's pretty special. To do it before anyone else adds just a little bit more magic to the big moment.

Jackson Satterlee became the first Cedar Falls Tiger to win an individual Class 3A boys' state title. The Tiger's head bowling coach is Brad Baker and he told the Courier he wasn't surprised by Jackson's performance. He was just happy he chose the Class 3A individual state tournament to have a great day of bowling.

I would not say surprised. I was just glad that he decided to pick today to put it all together. He has had moments where you could see the flashes…He always seems to always be up there, but it is one of those can we put all of it together at the right time.

This isn't the first time Jackson has had a taste of bowling at the state tournament either. Last season, as a Freshman, Jackson qualified for state, and struggled a bit, as he finished second to last in the qualifying round.

Sometimes the best thing that can happen to a young athlete is getting a little taste of what success looks like to help push you to be better the next year. Qualifying for the state tournament, in any high school sport is a fantastic accomplishment. Jackson used qualifying last season as motivation to come back stronger this season.

In a humble fashion, Satterlee gave credit to his teammates for pushing him to improve throughout his years of bowling. He told the Courier,

We had a really good team this year. It started out good in practice, practiced almost every day, and practiced as hard as we could. We put the time in outside of practice. It has been a really good season.

Wanting to beat his state-qualifying mark of 635 last year, Jackson improved this state tournament by 47 pins, and shot a 682. After struggling a bit in his second match, he found his rhythm during his 3rd match and the rest was history. He told the Courier,

I shot 231 in the first game and struggled a little bit in the second game, but I bounced back well in the third game and never looked back.

Jackson went on to beat 4th seed Jaxon Robinson, of Cedar Rapids Kennedy, in the championship match 226 to 195.

The high school bowling championships continue today (Feb-21) with the class 2A team and 1A individual matchups, and the state tournament will wrap up tomorrow (Feb 22) with the class 3A team and 2A individual matchups.

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