What were you doing when you were sixteen years old?
For most teenagers, getting through high school with good grades and spending time with friends would be deemed a success. Some even manage to take on a part-time job as well.
Jillian Martin is not most teenagers.
The sixteen-year-old native of Stow, Ohio recently took up professional bowling as a part-time gig. A couple of weeks ago, she competed at the Professional Women’s Bowling Association (PWBA) Kickoff Classic Series.
The 2020 PWBA season was canceled due to COVID-19, so this marked the return of professional women’s bowling for the first time since September of 2019. To minimize travel, the PWBA hosted three national tournaments at the International Training and Research Center (ITRC) in Arlington, Texas to begin the 2021 campaign.
The ITRC is the Mecca of bowling in many ways. It is the home of Team USA and Junior Team USA. You can find some of the finest coaches and bowling minds in the world roaming its hallowed halls at any time.
I was fortunate enough to practice there before in the summer of 2018, and let me tell you: I was not worthy of that opportunity.
Martin, on the other hand, was born for it. The ITRC and Team USA will be a fixture throughout her next, I don’t know, fifteen years or so of competitive bowling.
Martin first made her way onto Junior Team USA back in July of 2019 when she was just fourteen years old. She earned her spot on the team competing at the Junior Gold Championships, the largest youth bowling tournament in the nation — a five-day, 26-game hellish marathon.
Throughout the week, her name was listed on the Under-20 standings, not the Under-17 or Under-15 ones. Some competitors and parents speculated there was a typo; she was only fourteen, after all.
It was no typo. Martin sought the tougher competition and, more importantly, one of the six automatic berths on Junior Team USA afforded to U20 competitors. She chose to move up a division in order to chase her dream.
She proceeded to run over all 438 older girls. Martin led qualifying and earned a coveted spot on Junior Team USA.
Martin is no stranger to success against more experienced competition. That’s why it wasn’t too much of a surprise to those in the bowling industry when she entered the PWBA events in Arlington.
But many wondered if she was ready for the stage. These weren’t 18- and 19-year-old girls anymore — these women are the best in the world, minus a few trapped overseas due to travel visa issues. In fact, the PWBA snubbed Martin from an article highlighting the top “Rookies to Watch”.
Any doubts were erased in an instant, as Martin made her presence felt during the opening event. She finished the Bowlers Journal Classic’s nine-game qualifying block in ninth place among 36 competitors and advanced to match play.
While her record of 4-8 wasn’t particularly astounding, she stole the show by throwing the first eleven strikes and shooting 299 in the sixth game of match play. It was the highest game any competitor bowled all week. Martin jumped from +119 to +406 and climbed into an eighth-place finish.
Not a bad debut, right? She was just getting started.
The ITRC Classic was the second tournament of the week. Martin qualified in sixth place, this time averaging a whopping 229 for the nine games, and again advanced to the match play round.
Whatever issues plagued her the first time around — nerves, shot-making, bad luck, etc. — well, they were no longer a factor. She compiled a 7-4-1 record and catapulted up to +928 for 21 games. During games 18-20, she shot 289, 234, and 278 for an 801 series. That clutch stretch was instrumental in earning the number three seed for the stepladder finals.
Suddenly, Martin sat three victories away from a national title and becoming the youngest to ever win a PWBA title.
In her first match, she defeated arguably the G.O.A.T. of women’s bowling, Hall of Famer Liz Johnson, 238-235. She then took down 2019 USBC Queens champion Dasha Kovalova 227-185.
Only one game stood between Martin and history. She would face Bryanna Coté, who has suffered through three runner-up finishes in pursuit of her second career title, and first since 2016.
The tightly-contested and high-scoring match came down to the final frame. Martin threw all three strikes in the tenth for an impressive 238 game, forcing Coté to mark. A pesky ten pin created a brief moment of chaos, but Coté converted the spare and secured the title.
Martin’s championship pursuit would have to wait another day. Well, technically two.
The Hall of Fame Classic began two days later. It combined each competitor’s qualifying blocks from the first two events, which netted Martin the number four seed entering the 24-game, round-robin match play round. The right-hander engineered a staggering 18-6 record in match play to move to +877, just 33 pins behind the leader. Martin earned the number two seed for the stepladder finals.
Wait. Time out.
I want you to stop and think about that for a second. Through 42 games of competition against the best bowlers in the world, a sixteen-year-old sat a mere 33 pins from the lead — less than one pin per game! It cannot be understated what an impressive and monumental achievement that is in and of itself.
Alas, Martin’s banner week would come to an end in her first match against Julia Bond, another rising, young star on the PWBA Tour. While she did not win any of the Kickoff Classic Series events, Martin was undoubtedly the week’s ultimate victor.
Bond went on to capture her first career title over Lindsay Boomershine, but the term “rising, young star” doesn’t quite feel like the proper description for Bond. She fits the traditional definition to a tee — she’s barely 25 years old, only in her second season on tour, and has a college degree so fresh the ink has barely dried.
But Bond has been a staple on the bowling scene forever. She’s a five-time Team USA Member, four-time Junior Team USA member, and three-time First Team All American at Nebraska. She’s won Junior Gold and the US Amateur Championship; as a freshman, she led the Huskers to a national championship while earning the Most Oustanding Player award. She’s got a dozen medals, including nine gold, to her name from international competition with Team USA.
Those are just the wins — I left out a double-digit number of top-three performances at equally prestigious events. This was indeed Bond’s first, though certainly not last PWBA title — but how can she be a “rising, young star” when she is almost nine years older than Martin?
That is the perspective in which Martin’s performance must be viewed. She competed against the PWBA’s young guns like Bond, seasoned veterans like Shannon O’Keefe, international superstars like Kovalova, and Tom Brady-esque G.O.A.T’s like Johnson.
Martin didn’t just prove she belonged, either. Based on each competitor’s average finish across all three events, she beat them all. She also racked up over ten grand in cold, hard cash scholarship money, the highest among non-champions and fourth-most overall.
Jillian Martin may not have taken the SAT’s yet, but she’s already moved on to bigger and better tests. Make no mistake about it: bowling’s next young superstar has arrived.
Nolan Hughes is a college bowler at Lincoln Memorial University. He will be graduating this spring with a degree in Sport Management and attending journalism school in the fall. He can be contacted via email at nolan.hughes@lmunet.edu.
*All photos obtained via the PWBA’s Facebook page.