With students playing pool and bowling where the USBC Intercollegiate men’s bowling club and women’s NCAA bowling team practice, Warhawk Alley can be a hectic place. It’s that energy that new women’s bowling head coach Becca Hagerman relates to.
Sure it’s chaotic, but it’s all good energy flowing through the bowling team that Hagerman leads as she learns to be a coach. At just 23 years old, and still taking online classes for a master’s degree, she brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to UW-Whitewater.
Hagerman completed her college bowling career at Division I Jacksonville State University in the spring. She was the national player of the year and won her second team NCAA national championship. She brings those honors plus experience on the women’s pro tour along with several all-conference and All-American accolades with her as she looks to share her knowledge with the college bowlers of today at Whitewater.
“Why would I not want them to learn?” Hagerman said.
During her college bowling career Hagerman picked up more than a thing or two under her coaches Shannon and Bryan O’Keefe. Hagerman started her college career at McKendree University and followed the O’Keefes to JSU when they started the program there. As she takes her first steps in coaching, she often looks to those who guided her through college bowling.
“They’re the standard. When we think about how we want our program to look like, the culture, us as coaches, we’re basing all of our knowledge off what they’ve shown us,” Hagerman said. “They did a really good job of being able to create a family feel within their program. That’s something we want to emulate.”
It was the O’Keefes that helped her get to Whitewater. At her last NCAA tournament of the 2023-24 season retiring coaches were honored. Among them was Leann Sullivan, Whitewater’s coach of 13 years. Bryan O’Keefe told Hagerman how UWW was not far from her hometown of Rockford.
“I really didn’t know what I wanted to do after my college eligibility was done,” Hagerman said. “I knew I was going to go on the [pro] tour in the summer and I knew I was going to take a class in the summer online as well as some in the fall. I was going to focus on school in the fall and I had to get a big girl job in the spring. That was the plan.”
Turns out that big girl job was being the head coach of the Warhawks.
While she has found plenty of success in her own bowling career, Hagerman credits those around her and team culture as to why she could achieve so much. Culture is something she wants her team to focus on as she takes the reins. Three elements build the culture she brings to the team: respect, responsibility and accountability. By living up to those three standards the Warhawks should be capable of competing and succeeding at a high level.
Culture is just one piece in the puzzle of bowling. From understanding the oils on the lanes, different balls, differing surfaces, to even the amount of people using a lane, bowling is one big puzzle.
“That’s what it is, you’re trying to decode the puzzle. While also making sure you’re throwing it good because that could be part of the problem – it could be you. It might not be the lane this time, it might not be the ball, it could be you,” Hagerman said.
Sure, bowling itself is a puzzle, but for Hagerman bowling is one of the many puzzle pieces in her life. From bowling professionally to coaching the Warhawks, this 23-year-old master’s student has a chaotic puzzle to solve. As the season begins, the pieces are about to start fitting in place.
