ERLANGER, Ky. — You can find one of America’s best young bowlers in Erlanger.
Alyssa Bechtol, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Turkey Foot Middle School who’s on the Dixie Heights team, rolled a 12-strike perfect 300 – the first in Colonels history – in a Nov. 30 match against Boone County at Strike and Spare Family Fun Center in Erlanger.
Which is pretty good for someone who took up the sport just three years ago, largely because she watched older brother Cameron at Campbell County.
“I like it because it can be fun and competitive at the same time,” Bechtol said. “I love the drive and the motivation for it, and I also travel with it.”
The 300 was just one part of Bechtol’s excellent year.
She placed second in Region 6 in January and 20th at the state tournament last season. In July, she finished 30th of 326 in the U-15 Division at the Junior Gold Championship tournament in Indianapolis, and Dixie Heights coach David Phelps said Bechtol carries a 199 average so far this season.
High school bowlers play a two-game individual series plus Baker games, in which five team members alternately roll two frames.
Alyssa had been close to 300 before – she’d rolled seven or eight straight strikes several times. The opening game on Nov. 30 was not her best – she managed just a 170.
“I think the first game, I was getting tense,” she said “Sometimes I missed my spares; that probably got me tense.”
A lane has arrows placed 15 feet from the foul line in five-board increments from each gutter. A bowler’s task is to calculate the breakpoint – the place where a lane’s oil pattern ends and the ball is farthest away before hooking toward the headpin.
Chris Bechtol said Alyssa’s breakpoint was about nine boards, about one board right of the second arrow.
Alyssa Bechtol relaxed through the second game. Phelps did not.
“I was very excited, yes; I think I was as excited as her.,” he said. “The last five frames of the game, I did not move.”
The 12 shots for the right-handed Bechtol were in the 1-3 pocket. “All of ‘em were solid,” Alyssa’s dad, Chris Bechtol, said.
By the 10th frame, everyone left Bechtol alone. Phelps was anxious.
“When she had six or seven strikes in a row, my feet stayed planted,” Phelps said. “I didn’t move the entire time.”
Bechtol has two goals: to earn a scholarship to defending national champion Vanderbilt, where Campbell County alumna Kaylee Hitt is a junior, and eventually join the PWBA tour – and bowl against her role model Daria Pajak, a Professional Women’s Bowling Association competitor from Poland.
“She’s cool, calm and collected,” she said.
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