Tyler Radelja is picking up right where he left off at the lanes and is a provincial champion again.
The 10-pin bowler from Nanaimo’s Splitsville Entertainment won his senior division last month at the Youth Bowling Canada B.C. championships in Vancouver’s Town and Country Lanes.
“I started off a bit slow and came from behind,” he said. I was probably in fourth for most of the tournament and then the last two games were the key games to win.”
Going into his last game, Radelja was trailing first place by 42 pins and was assigned a lane adjacent to the frontrunner.
“He was bowling right beside me, so I saw that he wasn’t getting anything going,” Radelja said. “I started with three [strikes] and then I had a spare and I kept striking.”
Radelja also won a B.C. championship as a bantam bowler back in 2008, and went on to win the national championship that year, too.
He thought at the time that he’d like to try to win in the bantam, junior and senior divisions, but the two-sport athlete prioritized basketball for a while, including a stint playing with the Vancouver Island University Mariners.
Now bowling is his focus again, especially with national championships just over a month away on May 7-9 in Calgary. Nationals is a different format, based on wins rather than total pins, so Radelja’s preparing for the challenge of playing a lot of games and maintaining focus.
“It’s a mental game,” he said. “If you throw a bad game, you’ve just got to pick it up the next game. You’ve just got to keep your mind in it. Anyone can throw a bad game.”
Two other Splitsville bowlers medalled at provincials. Kayden and Jordan Singer both took silver in their respective bantam categories.
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