Strategy. The one thing everyone looks over when it comes to the sport of bowling. It’s the reason the game is so difficult. Many people struggle with it, but one GlenOak bowler does not.

Junior Anthony Vacanti is a bowler on the GlenOak bowling team. This year he performed well enough to qualify for the state tournament in Columbus where he placed 42nd out of 106 bowlers with a total score of 568 through three sets.

Vacanti has been bowling for years. He started when he was 10, playing in junior leagues at his uncle’s bowling alley.

“We were looking for something to do on the weekends, me and my brother, and he got us into a league at the bowling alley he worked at,” Vacanti said.

Although Vacanti has been bowling for years, he says it is not too hard to pick up for newcomers. For other sports there is the factor of tryouts and years of practice, but not with bowling. 

“It does take time, but it’s not insanely difficult,” Vacanti said. “It takes long to get good at it but it doesn’t take long to get decent at it,”

They practice three times a week for about an hour and a half each time. During state week though, he had to practice a lot, trying to get into a rhythm for the big match.

Those hours of practice are needed as it is insanely difficult to read a lane. Vacanti had to work with the oil patterns on the lane that are used to make your ball spin in the proper way. There are a few ways but most popular is side-to-side or “house shot”, which is used at a general bowling alley. 

“There is a decent amount of oil volume in the middle and then less on the outside so you get to see where your ball starts to ‘rev up’, it’s where your ball starts to roll and spin faster,” Vacanti said.

Vacanti’s oil pattern practice paid off as he scored a 692 to get out of the district level and move on to the state match. He was one of six non-team qualifying individual bowlers that moved on. Vacanti wasn’t expecting it at all. 

Bowling is a different type of sport due to the individual factor that it has. 

“For basketball and baseball you know there’s like a team sport thing, there’s no individual possibility, you can’t play by yourself,” he said.

Bowling provides a sport that all can do and all can be good at and something competitive with both yourself and others.