Julie Roba: The Legend

2 years after Wendy Martin begins playing for the bowling team as a sophomore, Julie Roba enters the team in her first year at Trinity. There still was not an official women’s team so similar to Wendy, Roba played as the only woman on the team. One of her earliest bowling accomplishments in her Trinity career came in the December of 1976 where she led the team to a highly unexpected victory over then first place University of Houston in a Texas A&M tournament. The story of this huge upset becomes even more incredible as this was Julie Roba’s first collegiate competition yet she dominated in her first match as she beat two of the Cougar’s top three bowlers. She kept up this level of performance throughout the tournament since by the end of it she became the second top scorer on the team with an average of 171 after winning six of eight matches.

Her performance must have inspired others since there were enough interested women the following year to finally create a women’s team. Roba continued her heroics in the following seasons as she was consistently the top bowler on the team and led as the captain. She did all of this as she also played softball for the school. Her bowling career seems to be a story of the next sports movie coming out of Hollywood. There is an account of a friendly match between Trinity and Texas A&M that was scheduled to take place on the same day as a softball tournament. Once the softball tournament ended, Roba headed straight to the match. She was not even expected to be there yet she still came in and earned the highest average out of her team. With the combination of these strong factors, women’s bowling would be able to thrive at Trinity University.