John Williamson
John Williamson is a self-described "decent sort of recreational bowler." But the baby-faced Williamson is one helluva bowling coach. In 2007, Williamson coached the fledging Lady Commodore bowling team to a national title. He's the only Vandy coach in history who can make that claim.
His route to the alleys is a roundabout one. He played football at Ole Miss after a standout football and baseball career at Franklin Road Academy. He came back to Nashville to work in Vandy's athletic development office and then worked for Vandy's baseball team.
When Vanderbilt made the Title IX-inspired decision in 2004 to start a women's bowling team, Williamson decided to take a run at the job. Already well-versed in the labyrinth of NCAA regulations, he figured he could learn enough about bowling to lead a team.
"I pitched my boss that I could learn the ins and outs and technical side of bowling," he said. "Throwing a ball is throwing a ball. Timing and leverage is relatively the same."
Three years later, Williamson had taken tony Vanderbilt to the pinnacle of the decidedly blue-collar sport of bowling. It's a strange mix: Vanderbilt — the shining institutional example of Southern privilege, and bowling — a game with a working-class pedigree.
"We can add to the economic diversity [of the university]," he says. "We add kids that wouldn't normally come here. It's opened Vandy to a whole new demographic," he said. And it's brought Vandy something it's never had in more than a century of athletics: a national championship.
Working for Vanderbilt baseball coach Tim Corbin taught Williamson a thing or two. In collegiate bowling, tournaments often use the Baker system — a team's five bowlers roll a game in a sort of batting order. One bowler takes the first and sixth frames, the next the second and seventh and so on. Williamson says there is some art in setting the lineup, as there is in baseball.
"We like to have one of our better players lead off. ... And someone might bowl better behind someone else," he said.
And when the team needs firing up — as it did after a very disappointing start to the current season — Williamson can have a come-to-Jesus meeting just like a coach in any other sport. Just before the Christmas break, Williamson called his team together.
"We had a little discussion," he said, a wry smile on his face. After the holiday, Vanderbilt rattled off three top-three tournament finishes.
Williamson is too humble to offer advice to his colleagues coaching the all-too-often snakebit Commodores teams. But he said the run to the trophy back in'07 had a magic ingredient, one that Commodore backers (especially of the gridiron variety) often lament not having: luck.
"We had a good team but we caught some luck. We've had better teams since then, but that team was special," he said.
It's weird to think of Vandy as a bowling powerhouse — about as weird as having a "decent sort of recreational bowler" build a tenpin dynasty.
