Wichita State assistant bowling coach Mark Lewis will retire after the 2026-27 season, ending a connection to the Shocker program that stretches back 53 years.

Lewis first arrived at Wichita State to bowl in 1973, The Sunflower reported Sunday. He left school, returned in 1978 and helped the Shockers win their first bowling national championship in 1980 in Milwaukee. He went on to win the 1988 U.S. Amateur Championship and placed sixth individually representing the United States at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, where bowling was a demonstration sport.

After coaching a national team in Dubai around 1995, Lewis came back to Wichita State as assistant coach in 1999. In 27 years on staff, he has coached 117 All-Americans, 10 National Players of the Year, eight individual national champions and been part of 13 team national championships.

The numbers tell one story. Lewis told The Sunflower that what matters more is watching students who arrived on campus shy and uncertain find themselves through the sport.

Lewis said the program's transition toward NCAA status shaped his decision to step aside. The women's team became an NCAA program under Shocker Athletics in July 2024, competing as an affiliate member of Conference USA under head coach Holly Harris. The men's program remains sponsored by the Rhatigan Student Center because the NCAA does not sponsor men's bowling.

"Getting the girls switched over to NCAA was a big goal of ours. We worked on that for years, and it finally happened," Lewis said.

He added that the men's team is also moving toward NCAA competition, which will require a dedicated assistant for each squad. Lewis called it the right time to give up the position and let someone else step in.

The WSU women reached the 2026 NCAA championship match before falling to Jacksonville State, 4 games to 1, at Yorktown Lanes in Parma Heights, Ohio. The program has won 11 Intercollegiate Team Championships (ITC). The men have claimed a record 13 ITC titles, most recently in 2023.

Harris, a two-time All-American who bowled under Lewis and graduated in 2014 before joining the coaching staff in 2016, called Lewis a father figure who put her on the path to coaching. She credited Lewis and former coach Gordon Vadakin with building the Shocker bowling program from the ground up and said she is nervous about what the program looks like without him.

Lewis's mother was a youth director at a bowling alley and introduced him to the sport as a child. He won a Kansas state championship in baseball before choosing bowling at Wichita State.

The 2026-27 season is already underway. Lewis said practices for the women's team and tryouts for the men's team were in progress as of Sunday, Sept. 13.