Odenton 13-year-old Tyler Anderson making noise on junior bowling circuit

Bowling is naturally inviting as a leisure sport. Anyone with the arm strength to pick up a ball can wander into their local alley and have fun trying to knock down pins.

Novices chomping on chicken wings mid-frame can play side-by-side with more serious participants, who, while outnumbered, are seeing things in the ball racks, hand positioning and pin layout the rest miss.

Tyler Anderson of Odenton, only 8 years old at the time, suddenly joined that group in December 2018 when his mother took him to Greenway Bowl. Sure, the bumpers were up, but something between the ball return system and the pins down lane already made sense in the youngster’s mind.

Anderson, now age 13, learned to toss a ball the same way a musician can play by ear — watching other bowlers while soaking in the details and angles no one else would think to look out for on their first go-around.

“I look at where their head is, make sure they’re looking up, where their knee is and what they do with their hand when they release [the ball],” he said. “I kind of copy what I see.”

Anderson had enough fun to want to join a league, which his parents — who had zero bowling knowledge between them — gladly obliged. It was immediately obvious to onlookers that Anderson’s technique was awfully refined for a bowler so raw. His stepping motion into his release was aggressive but measured. His powerful hurl, combining impressive launch speed with subtle touch, delivered the ball right where he wanted it to go.

“I was always like that,” Anderson said on the mechanics of his renowned roll. “It’s just who I am.”

The Greenway staff quickly picked up on it and suggested that the self-taught, 8-year-old Anderson could qualify for state regionals on the spot. His parents made the trek to the event and he repaid their brief time investment with a tournament win.

Anderson is one of the state’s top youth bowlers. The gangly teen is constantly touring on the Mid-Atlantic’s junior circuit and has amassed almost $25,000 in scholarship money between placements in various regional tournaments, solo youth opens and team championship events along the East Coast.

None of Anderson’s ambitions would have been possible without his competitive drive, a feature he seemed to unlock along with his love of bowling.

“He was watching some of the older people,” Eric Anderson, Trent’s father, said, “and he was fearless. He just put all of this speed and power into his back legs at 8 years old.”

Whenever he’s not competing in one of a dozen or so major events between October and August, the younger Anderson can be found practicing anywhere between 10 and 24 hours per week. He does so with help of a homemade network of advisors spearheaded by his father, who has been thrust into a world he knew and cared little about before Tyler discovered his passion.

Maryland’s youth bowlers are notoriously under supported compared to the majority of other states, forcing Eric to learn the game on the fly in order to step up as his son’s chief day-to-day coach.

The elder Anderson isn’t alone in providing instruction. Will Clark, Tyler’s official coach, occasionally flies in to spend as many as six hours a day with the prodigy. Meanwhile, Tyler regularly visits with trainers to assist with his technical and mental preparation.

Eric, having spent the last five-plus years attempting to soak in just as much intel as his son, serves as something of a blend of all those resources. He’s at Tyler‘s side every day to dispense advice about technique and form or reading the lane along with his son to suggest which ball to use — similar to a caddy in golf.

“The objective of the bowler is to quickly ascertain how much oil is out there, how many feet is it out there, how many millimeters per board and what ball is seeing the lane conditions correctly,” Eric said. “What [the bowler] wants to do is throw a ball down and say, ‘OK, I’ve executed correctly, I hit my target. I’m using this ball, and I saw that it started picking up early and over-hooked. Or maybe it didn’t pick up enough and it didn’t hook enough.’ So they can make adjustments, they can play geometry to try and figure out, ‘Can I get this ball to hit the pocket?’”

A former basketball player, Eric understands the importance of Tyler cementing his mental fortitude at this impressionable age without succumbing to pressure. The younger Anderson spends three hours a week doing strength and agility drills, knowing this form of athletic competition requires mental and physical preparation outside of the alley.

“There’s a belief that bowlers don’t need to be in shape,” Eric said. “[Tyler] is solely dedicated to this. When you look at a lot of professional bowlers, their body shape is very much like Tiger Woods. When Tiger came onto the scene he was very built and strong. Everyone else was out there drinking and smoking and he was out there driving 60 more yards than these guys and revolutionized the sport.”

Mike Sinek, one of Tyler’s technical trainers, is a bowling veteran who currently runs the junior program at The Lanes Fort Meade. It’s his job to help hone the 13-year-old’s intangibles. Sinek is an expert on how different kinds of bowling balls interact with oils of the lane, offering a wealth of wisdom on how to play the game between the rolls.

Beyond the physical and visual advice Sinek delivers, he also offers exercises to ready bowlers for the mental aspect of competition. He quickly pinpointed Tyler’s quick adjustment to coaching advice and competitive mindset as strengths. Sinek now instructs his student at least once a week on how to compete and deal with the occasional failure, integral in a game centered around chasing perfection.

“We talk about focus, staying in the present, anger management, staying in the process,” Sinek said. “We talk about what the process is because bowling is an individual sport. If you make a two degree or 2 mph misstep, your ball won’t go where it needs to go. We discuss how you approach that from a competitor’s standpoint.”

Those tweaks, along with Tyler’s constant pursuit of bettering his own form, are guided by his goal-oriented mindset. Even when he’s riding high, Anderson can always find something to work on. Right now, it happens to be keeping his thumb out and tucking his shoulders.

That drive to succeed has already paid dividends. Anderson is winning real money to pay for a college education, but his reputation has begun to precede him in competitive spheres. Other junior bowlers occasionally recognize Anderson from the videos he’s posted online and flock to him at tournaments the same way they would to such renowned professionals as Jason Belmonte or Kyle Troup.

“The youth that are so motivated by the sport of Belmonte or Troup, they gravitate to their peers,” Eric said. “We went to Junior Bowl two years ago and all these kids we’d never met before, going ‘Hey, Ty! I know you, I know you!’ And then if a bowler has success, it gets even more kids interested.”

Tyler and his family hope the teenager’s ascendance can continue to bring the sport into a new stratosphere of acclaim. Maryland was one of six states without a high school bowling league before Eric and some of his associates founded one earlier this year — a flaw in the system that robbed local studs of the kind of resources and access they needed to grow.

The Andersons are thankful for volunteer helpers like Sinek filling holes in the development system, but Maryland still has a long way to go before its bowlers feel the same support as other sports.

For now, Tyler will continue to solidify outside hope for a bright future in bowling. “He loves it,” Sinek observed. “You can tell how much he loves it by watching him, and as long as he has that love, he can take the game as far as he wants.”