Local youth bowler earns top honors and scholarship money

  • By Bill Houston
  • August 21, 2010
  • 330
                        
Fourteen-year-old Clay Stutzman recently received two top honors from the Ohio state division of the United States Bowling Congress at the USBC’s year-end youth awards banquet in Columbus. During league play at Spare Time Lanes in Millersburg this past winter, Stutzman rolled a 299 game, which was the highest score in the entire state for his age group, and put together a 768 series, which was good for third place in the state. Stutzman also finished the season with the fourth highest average in the state of Ohio for competitors his age, at 208. Stutzman will be a freshman at West Holmes High School this fall, but he already has about $500 in college scholarship money saved up thanks to the USBC’s Smart Program, which allows youth bowlers to maintain their amateur status by deferring prize-winnings into a scholarship fund that will pay their chosen college or university when they enroll. According to his father, Matt Stutzman, Clay has been “cashing” money into the Smart Program since he was about eight-years-old. Matt and Steve Eiler from Spare Time Lanes both coach Stutzman, who started competing successfully in Ohio Youth Bowling Tournament (OYBT) and Junior Tournament Bowler’s Association (JTBA) events against high school seniors and college players this past winter. Matt Stutzman said Clay developed a passion for the game through his father who “has been bowling since [he] was about 10-years-old.” The elder Stutzman competes at the adult-level in a lot of USBC sanctioned events throughout the year, earning enough cash winnings that he considers it “like a second job.” As for Clay, he recently was cleared by the Ohio High School Athletic Association to continue earning scholarship money on the bowling circuit while he plays football and baseball at West Holmes. Asked whether he worried football, baseball and other high school activities might distract Clay from his commitments to bowling, Matt said Clay had just told him he “was really looking forward to working on his game this winter.”


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