High School Bowling: Family ties assist Mees By Michael J. Petro
Throwing a bowling ball comes about as natural to Chelsey and Chad Mee as it for most to carry on their usual daily activities. Those smooth and powerful release, consistent accuracy and mature approach to the game don’t come from just anywhere, though. They can be credited to the accessibility of the sport to the siblings and the rich tradition of bowling in their family.
Chelsey, a senior at Frontier High School, and Chad, an eighth grader in the district’s middle school, virtually grew up in a bowling alley with their father, Jim, owning a bowling center in Jamestown since 1991. Jim Mee and the children’s mother, Lauri, are also quite the accomplished bowlers themselves, both formerly competing on the professional circuit. If that’s not enough, the Mees’ Uncle Dave has also been an influence on the two as a certified coach for the sport. He headed the Frewsburg High School team that Chelsey played for before transferring into the Frontier School District.
The Mee children have not only asserted themselves in the local bowling scene as a chip off the old block, but also two of the best youth bowlers in Western New York. This year’s high school season was capped by 14-year-old Chad throwing his first-ever perfect 300 game and finishing first overall at the Section VI Championships and Chelsey, 17, taking second place overall as part of the two-time defending sectional champion Falcons’ girls squad.
“They both have great games and throw the ball very well. I’m very proud and it’s been fun to watch,” said Lauri Mee, a successful collegiate bowler at Erie Community College and the University at Buffalo and past Buffalo Queens Tournament title holder who also tried her hand at the professional tour. “I think it also helps that Jim and I have both been through this before, so we can relate to what they’re going through. We’ve had success in bowling and they’ve grown up in bowling centers so they’re both very familiar and comfortable with the game.”
Chad and Chelsey, both of whom began to play around the age of four, have seen their games reach tremendous levels thanks in part to game after game thrown during their childhood, many of which were on the lanes at their father’s Jamestown Bowling Company.
“They’ve grown up with it and it’s been amazing to see their games develop,” said Jim Mee, a member of the Professional Bowlers Association for 10 years, who was inducted into the Jamestown and Dunkirk Bowling Association Halls of Fame. “For Chad to be shooting these types of scores at his age is remarkable. He works real hard at it. Chelsey’s got natural ability. She can take off a few months and still bowl a 650 series.”
Chelsey can remember there always being ample opportunity to bowl and get a quick lesson or two from a familiar face.
“It comes so natural for us,” said Chelsey, who transferred to Frontier midway through the winter bowling season last year. “It is our father’s bowling alley, so we could practice all we wanted and there’s always a family member that could help us out.”
The two seizing the opportunity to bowl has certainly paid off as both will compete at the state championships on March 6-7 at Mardi Bob Lanes in Poughkeepsie. Chelsey will go for the second season as Frontier looks to win a state title as a team and Chad will go as part of the six-bowler Section VI squad.
“At the beginning of the season, you always think about trying to go to states, so when you accomplish that, it’s a great feeling,” said Chad, who will be joined on the team by senior Tom Pagano of neighbor school, Hamburg.
The state level may just be a stepping stone to much bigger feats for Chad, whose high school coach, Bob Clendening, believes that the middle school student is at least a potential Division I college bowler and may even one day join the professional ranks, as did his parents, if that’s the path he chooses to pursue.
“I can see him competing at that level one day,” Clendening said. “He can really throw the ball. What is most impressive about him is that he already knows how to read the lanes and find the right line. He gets locked in and he just keeps the strikes coming.”
Chad’s improvement over the past few seasons has been drastic thanks to also playing on the Western New York Youth Bowling Tour out of Rochester. He’ll also compete in one of the nation’s biggest tournaments for juniors over the summer in Indianapolis.
“Chad’s 14 but you can call him a veteran bowler,” his father, Jim, said. “His game has developed to another level.”
So much so that Clendening wasn’t questioning if he’d ever see Chad throw a 300 game, it was a matter of when it would happen. The Frontier veteran coach was even more impressed that it came under the pressure of the Section VI Championships on the difficult venue of Thruway Lanes in Cheektowaga.
“I saw this coming, maybe not at this event, but I actually was expecting it last year (in his first season with the team as a seventh grader),” said Clendening. “His father tells me that he’s virtually self taught so there are some things for him to learn, like changing his approach on some spare angles. But when you bowl like he does, there’s not much that you can’t do.”
Chad said he was caught up in a zone the day of his 300 and he did all he could to let anything to take him out of it. “I wasn’t really nervous, but I was trying to throw the balls quickly and not think too much about it,” said Chad, who finished with a 1,537 for six games.
His mother credits that focus for her son’s prowess on the lanes, in addition to his ability to also score well as a student. Chad has a 95 average in the classroom.
“The game he has is at an unbelievable level,” said Lauri, a Hamburg resident. “When friends of ours go to see him bowl, they’re amazed. He’s developed the right mentality early on. I’m amazed, too, as a mother and a bowler.”
Chelsey said the two have a healthy sibling rivalry but she also roots very hard for her little brother. She
was still in class when her brother threw the 300 game.
“I was so mad that I could n’t be there for that,” Chelsey remembered. “The school called me down to the main office to tell me.”
Still, all she talked about afterward was beating her brother’s score the next day at the Section VI girls competition. She came reasonably close, finishing with a 1,314, despite nursing a pulled muscle in her leg. “We can be so competitive sometimes. We’re really bad about that,” Chelsey said. “Even though I knew I wouldn’t beat him, I told everyone that I would.”
Still, Chelsey’s focus was on helping fulfill her team’s season-long goal of returning to the State Championships to avenge a second place finish in 2009 by winning a title this year. She took each shot on one at a time and tried not to think about her ailing leg.
“The adrenanline hit because I knew how good the team was doing,” said Chelsey, who will anchor a team that also includes Tara Noworyta, Mel Willet, Amanda Klinger, Brooke Miller, Courtney Ruda and Carly Andrijczuk. “We got so close to winning states last year that we all wanted to get back for revenge this year.”
Though Chelsey no longer bowls as often as she did years ago and certainly not as much as her brother, her game continues to flourish. She is considering bowling at the college level, looking possibly to attend Notre Dame of Ohio.
“My son may have passed my daughter, but her ability is still amazing,” Jim Mee said. “Most girls throw the ball passively, but if you saw her stroke and didn’t know who you were looking at, you’d think a boy was throwing the ball.”
Chelsey could have been a distraction to a burgeoning Frontier program, coming to the varsity team halfway through the season last year, but instead she been a crucial figure in helping the team to a third sectional title in the past four seasons. She did already know some of her teammates from attending Frontier Schools until the eighth grade and playing in other youth leagues.
“She walked into a difficult situation. You would think it would have messed up our chemistry, but she works so hard and is just as determined as the other girls,” Frontier girls coach Joe Fasciana said.
“There was no problem with her meshing because she’s just a really good kid.”
While Chelsey is still weighing her future options, her brother has four more years to light up the local and possibly state and national scene. Though Chad admits he really doesn’t have any idea what he wants to do in the future, the possibilities seem endless. Chad jokes with his father that he’d like to break the 60 perfect games accumulated by Jim over 40 years of bowling. That’s not even out of the realm of possibility.
“I told him that he probably will,” Jim Mee quipped.
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