The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Amherst’s Velasquez is making history
Sophomore is first Lorain County girl to qualify for state as individual
It’s a result Makayla Velasquez spent all spring and summer thinking about.
After putting together a stellar freshman season last year for the Amherst bowling team, she finished the sectional tournament tied for fourth place. Since the bowler she was tied with had a higher game score, Velasquez
was bumped down to fifth place — one spot away from advancing to the district tournament.
This year Velasquez removed any chance of a tiebreaker. After coming one pin away from the district tournament last season, the Amherst sophomore qualified for the Division I state tournament by bowling a 591 at the district tournament last weekend at Stonehedge Lanes.
“It’s amazing,” Velasquez said of making it to the state competition. “I made getting to the state competition my goal for this year and I was able to get there.”
Velasquez’s district tournament started about as well as she could have hoped, as she finished with a 257 in her first game.
“I think she might have thrown two bad balls all game,” Amherst girls bowling coach Dave Dulls said.
After switching lanes for the second game, Velasquez ran into a rough patch, bringing whatever momentum she had to a screeching halt. All her balls that seemed to hook perfectly in the first game were now just a little off, and no matter how many small adjustments she made nothing seemed to work. Velasquez ended up finishing the second game with a 155, one of her lowest scores of the year.
“(The second pair of lanes) were probably the roughest lanes we’d seen all year and we just had a really tough time adjusting,” Dull said.
After a nearly 100 pin drop in her scores between the first two games, it would have been understandable if Velasquez had trouble responding in the third game.
That wasn’t the case. While her third game wasn’t the clinic that her first game was, Velasquez found her lines and rolled a 179. It might have not been an eye-popping score, but it was enough. She finished in sixth place with a 591 series, a score that earned her a spot in the state tournament. The girls State Tournament is March 7 at Columbus’ Wayne Webb Bowl.
“She’s so consistent in what she’s doing,” Dull said of Velasquez. “Good days or bad days she’s pretty even-keeled which is something we’re trying to teach all the girls. She’s done a great job of not letting the outside distractions get to her.”
For as long as Dull’s been involved in bowling, he’s known of Velasquez, thanks in large part to her father Mike Velasquez,
who’s a bowler himself. Makayla got her first taste of bowling as a kid when she’d go to bowling alleys with her dad and haphazardly throw her bowl down a lane flanked by bumpers on either side. Now she’s one of the best bowlers in the region.
In the moments after Velasquez’s District loss last year, Dull and his coaches saw the hunger to get better grow in her eyes. The day after, she was back on the lanes working on her craft, practice that’s paid of this year, as she was named the MVP of the Southwestern Conference for the second year in a row.
“She’s a heck of a hard worker,” Dull said. “She’s out bowling probably five night a week. To have a kid like that that wants to put that kind of effort in without a coach being there is incredible. All the other kids are starting to follow along.”
Coming into high school, Velasquez switched from a 13-pound ball to a 15-pound ball. While it was a tough transition for her at first, as she found herself sometimes tugging the ball into the gutter.
“Lat year I got really technical in breaking things down in my form,” she said. “A lot of times I get fast with my feet, so I’ve been working on taking my time. That’s been a major thing I’ve been working on now.”
In addition to being a personal milestone, Velasquez’s victory also made history in the region, as she became the first individual girl bowler from Lorain County to qualify for the state tournament.
Dull hopes she has some company next year.
“You could see at the district tournament the rest of our girls that didn’t make it were encouraged that we had someone make it and know that they could be there with a little bit of work,” he said. “The other girls on the team who are coming back have already said they want to be there with her as opposed to sitting at home.”