DuBOIS, Pa. (EYT/D9) — Melia Mitskavich loaded the car with her nine 15-pound bowling balls and made the nearly six-hour journey to North Brunswick, N.J., with one thing on her mind.
Winning.
(Pictured above, DuBois native and DuBois Central Catholic senior Melia Mitskavich holds her plaque after winning the PBA Junior National Championship East Region tournament over the weekend/submitted photo)
Last year, she was second at the PBA Junior National Championship East Region tournament. She wasn’t about to finish runner-up again.
Mitskavich didn’t need to fret. The DuBois native blitzed her way through a grueling weekend of bowling at the East Region event Friday through Sunday, averaging a 217.86 over the 22 games and defeated Kayla Starr of Crofton, Md., in a best-of-three final to win the girls division championship.
“The weekend before I was also bowling in a tournament — it was a team tournament called the Storm US National Junior Team Challenge — and the we ended up winning the whole thing,” Mitskavich said. “So I was kind of riding off the win from that. It felt very good to have a second winning weekend.”
Mitskavich was dialed in throughout, no matter the lane conditions.
And those lane conditions were constantly changing.
Nothing new for Mitskavich, who has had a bowling ball in her hand since a young age.
“I’m feeling very good right now,” she said. “I feel very confident in everything, like shotmaking, picking up spares. Just everything.”
Mitskavich cruised into the finals where she squared off against a familiar face.
She had known Starr from other tournaments and knew she was going to be in for a test.
Mitskavich won an epic first game, 258-235. But Starr rolled 10 consecutive strikes in the second game and ended up with a 289 to force a decisive third game.
Mitskavich won that one, 215-181, to claim the title.
“She’s a very good bowler,” Mitskavich said of Starr. “I knew it was going to be a pretty good match, so I just had to make good shots and make my spares and that’s exactly what I did.”
Mitskavich didn’t roll a game under 200 in the finals bracket, going 6-1.
The key was not concerning herself with what her opponent was doing, just the pins in front of her.
“I mean, there’s no defense in bowling,” she said, chuckling. “You can only control what you’re doing. So that’s all you should worry about.”
Mitskavich is looking forward to another crack at the PBA Junior National title, which will take place in early 2024.
Only 10 bowlers qualified — two from each of the five region tournaments. It’s a very select group. The best of the best. And once again Mitskavich is among them.
Last year, she finished sixth, going 4-5 in match play despite a 222.11 average.
“The experience at the PBA Junior Nationals last year was so cool,” she said. “They televised the championship match. I didn’t make it, but we still watched and seeing those girls on TV, I thought that was super cool and I wanted a chance to do that. I really wanted to go back there.”
Mitskavich has another big tournament this weekend in Green Bay, Wisc.
She’ll load up the car again with those nine bowling balls and make the 10-hour trek there to see if she can win the Storm Junior Championships title.
More goes into championship bowling than one might think.
“Yes, I take nine bowling balls — sometimes six — with me,” Mitskavich said, chuckling. “I just want to make sure I have everything that I might need.”
Each ball performs a little different depending on lane conditions and other factors.
Mitskavich wants to be prepared for anything.
“The surfaces, the cores of them, what they’re made out of — they all do different things,” she said. “And the lanes are different everywhere.”
But lugging nine 15-pound bowling balls all over the country can be a difficult endeavor — especially when she has take a flight to a tournament.
“One time me and my brother were bowling in a tournament in Las Vegas and we were flying,” she said. “I think we had 18 bowling balls. We had to check them and all our suitcases.”
Some pretty strange looks from the TSA agents.
“Driving is a whole lot easier than flying, that’s for sure,” She said.
Mitskavich does have a favorite among her nine — one she feels the most comfortable with.
“It’s a Storm bowling ball. It’s a Phaze II,” she said. “I could go to that one at any point and I could make it work. That’s definitely my favorite one.”
Mitskavich, who is also a standout softball player at DuBois Central Catholic and is heading into her senior year, certainly gets plenty of use from her entire arsenal of bowling balls.
Her ultimate goal is to be a professional bowler one day.
All that bowling never gets old — even if traveling with bowling balls weighing nearly 1,500 pounds does sometimes.
“It’s a lot of bowling, but I’m used to it,” Mitskavich said. “It doesn’t really faze me, bowling that much.”
