HENDERSON GUIDES LADY BRONCOS TO HISTORIC 600TH WIN
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. – There was little fanfare. While they briefly stopped play to acknowledge the achievement with a team picture and some words of congratulations, the moment soon passed as the games resumed.
To the relief of head coach and program architect Bobby Henderson, the Fayetteville State Lady Broncos recorded their 600th victory on Sunday. Then they went out and did what they always do.
Win some more.
Fayetteville State (25-1), the defending CIAA Bowling Champion and the first CIAA program to reach 600 wins, finished the three-day Southern Division meet in much the same way it has done in so many other divisional competitions.
Clear and utter domination.
The Lady Broncos, who have won 10 CIAA division titles in 11 years and two league championships in the last four seasons, completed the meet at their home B&B Bowling Lanes with a perfect 15-0 mark. Needing 12 wins coming into the weekend to hit 600, Fayetteville State reached that lofty perch with a dominant win over Johnson C. Smith during Sunday’s second Baker match.
“I can rest now,” said a breathless Henderson, who built the program from scratch in 2001. “I can sleep now, because I didn’t sleep at all last night.”
After that, it was on to wins 601, 602 and 603.
Not that there wasn’t some minor trepidation. The Lady Broncos, who romped through play with a 10-0 mark the first two days, only managed to slip past Winston-Salem State in the first Baker match on Sunday, clipping the Lady Rams by a mere eight pins.
With No. 599 out of the way and Johnson C. Smith on deck – the Lady Broncos had little trouble beating the Lady Golden Bulls twice in the first two days – Fayetteville State set its sights on 600. Henderson, true to form, allowed all seven of his bowlers to compete in the historic win, subbing reserves in and out of the five-bowler lineup.
“It’s all about these girls, and the girls who came before them” Henderson said.
“This is about them, and so every one of them had a chance to bowl. They all got an opprtunity to roll.”
Former Broncos bowlers appreciate Henderson’s sentiment and the accomplishment the program made on Sunday, but placed most of the credit on their beloved coach.
“Coach Henderson deserves all the accolades he can get,” said two-time CIAA Player of the Year Akira Turner. “I know he likes to say an honor like this is one shared by the team, that it’s for the girls, but he is the reason. I am so happy for him.”
Jessica Florit Shumate, who was an All-CIAA bowler at Fayetteville State and serves as a grad assistant under Henderson, echoed her former teammate’s thoughts.
“That is always Coach,” said Shumate. “He is modest and kind and always puts the team before him. But he is the driving force behind the team. As modest as he is, he is truly why this program has always been so great and why all the girls always love and care for him.
“Coach will never admit to how great he is and how he has directed the team to greatness. As much as it is the girls, it just as much him. He builds and creates the teams. Coach does more than inspire us in bowling, he inspires us in life. The word ‘unselfish’ describes Coach to a ‘T.’ That is who he is and always will be.”
With No. 600 out of the way, Henderson is happy to shift the focus to the remaining matches this season, and to the CIAA Tournament, which looms in late March.
“We’re the defending champions, but we want another ring,” he said. “And this team is just as good as the one from last year.”
LOOKING BACK
Henderson came to Fayetteville State nearly 40 years ago with dreams of making his name as a basketball player.
If he ever leaves FSU, he'll go out as a bowling legend.
Ranked as the No. 1 youth bowler growing up and the son of a professional bowler who would one day be enshrined in the N.C. Bowling Hall of Fame, it should've seemed logical all along that Henderson would leave his mark on one hardwood rather than the other.
But Henderson didn't see it that way.
"I gave bowling up to be a basketball player," he recalls now, sitting in his office surrounded by the trophies that serve as his wallpaper. "I wanted to be a basketball player. There was no money in bowling."
Maybe not. But there was something more.
THE MEMORIES
Walk into Henderson's office on the third floor of Fayetteville State's Felton J. Capel Arena, and the number of championship plaques on the wall is staggering.
So are the pictures.
"These pictures of my teams, these are my memories," he says, his typical machine-gun style of speaking slowing noticeably. "These two pictures here, these two teams, they were the catalyst of it all."
They are team photos shot just over a decade ago. Fayetteville State introduced bowling as a varsity sport in 2001, and Henderson, who's coached just about every other sport in nearly four decades at Fayetteville State, was given the reins of the fledgling program because he taught a bowling class in the physical education department.
"Those early teams, we only had 30 matches in a season," Henderson recalls, the machine gun fire picking up again. "I had probably 150 girls show up for the first tryout - everybody wants to be a part of something new. And of those 150, I bet about 148 of them didn't know a thing about bowling. But I found five or six girls who had done a little bit of youth bowling. And that first team went 25-5."
It's been quite a ride for Lady Broncos bowling since then: two CIAA championships, two CIAA runner-up finishes, 10 division championships in 11 years. All under Henderson's guidance.
But that's where the credit stops for Bobby Henderson.
"This isn't about me," he says. "It's about those girls. Every single one of them. I tell them all the time, anything we do, you're part of that history. It's yours. You did it."
THE PLAYERS - AND THE PHILOSOPHY
Academics matter to Henderson, even more than the sport and the program he's built.
"First question that comes out of my mouth is academics," says Henderson, who's had 26 bowlers named to CIAA All-Academic teams (Shumate and Turner were named to three All-Academic teams each). "And for recruiting, it's all about grades first. Bowling is a nonrevenue sport, and the money for our players needs to come from academics. It's obvious that academics are going to important to me and our team no matter what. It's No. 1."
Always, says Turner.
"Coach pushes academics more than anything," she says. "He makes you become a scholar. If you bowl for FSU, you will be a scholar-athlete. It's Coach's motto: you have to perform in school first before you can perform on the lanes."
While it's clear he can build bowlers, Henderson has molded adults as well. Turner thrived on the lanes in one of the hubs for bowling in the United States - Detroit. But despite her talent, she landed 700 miles from home at Fayetteville State because, as she puts it, her attitude was poor.
"I had a terrible attitude," she says. "That's why I ended up at Fayetteville State. But I changed there, and it was because of Coach Henderson."
THE ARCHITECT - AND LEGEND
Currently, there are 10 varsity sports at Fayetteville State. Bobby Henderson, over the years, has been a member of a coaching staff of six of them.
"Oh, Lord, I've coached everything," he muses.
Henderson came to Fayetteville State as a basketball player. He joined the Broncos a year after the team captured its only CIAA Basketball Championship, in 1973. Not long after he graduated, he began teaching at the University in 1982.
Two decades later, then Director of Athletics William Carver came to Henderson with an idea. Because Henderson was already teaching a bowling class in the P.E. department, why not take the head coaching job when the University instituted bowling in 2001?
"I had a history with the sport," Henderson says modestly, referring to his status as an elite youth bowler. "I could roll it a little bit back in the day."
But he could also teach. That came in handy when all those girls showed up - experience be damned -- for tryouts.
Henderson found a few diamonds in the rough. From there, he set about teaching the sport. Soon he found that desire played a valuable role in building his program.
"It you want to be good at bowling, you can do it," he says. "It's all about repetition. If you can learn to throw the same ball each and every time, it's not a problem. But we've always had people who like bowling, who want to bowl and want to do whatever it is it takes to become good bowlers.
"We've been lucky, too," he adds. "We're one of the only schools when bowling began that had enough talent right on campus. But since then, we've come a long ways."
No kidding.
The CIAA championships. The division titles. Myriad conference awards, including a staggering 29 All-Conference selections in 10 years. (Fayetteville State has landed four bowlers on a single All-CIAA list three times, and three bowlers on the All-CIAA team five times.) National tournament appearances. Countless appearances in national polls.
Of course, there's more. Henderson organized the National Youth Sports Program at Fayetteville State and serves on a variety of bowling association boards, including at the NCAA level. He teaches several classes a day -- "You have to check my door to see my class schedule, and what times I might be around," he says - and knows and understands the heady student-athlete compliance rules cold.
And then there are those other things.
A 77 percent winning percentage. Six seasons with more than 60 wins, four of which featured 72 or more victories.
603 wins - and counting - in all. The most in CIAA history.
"FSU is the No. 1 program in the CIAA, no question," Henderson can boast. "We're the only CIAA school that's won a Division-1 tournament, and we've been in the national tournament. The records are limitless. The last four years, we had a two-time Player of the Year, we set all kinds of records of players making All-Conference - it goes on."
But he doesn't want to stop there.
"Our goal is to break our records, if possible, each and every year," he says. "We want to be known."
Henderson, though, is already known. And so is his program.
He's also revered.
Not bad for a basketball player.
