Malia Briggs of Chambersburg won the PA State High School Bowling Championship in girls singles last Saturday at Lancaster’s Leisure Lanes. Click on the photo for a video of her bowling.

Yes, she is not in the LL League but a state championship from a player in the Susquehanna Valley is worth reporting about.

Briggs, a sophomore at Chambersburg, became the first known local bowling champion when she was crowned the winner of the PA State High School Championships last Saturday in Lancaster.

Briggs was the top qualifier, earning the No. 1 seed for the finals. In the step-ladder finals, No. 5 plays No. 4 and the winner plays No. 3; the winner of that match plays No. 2 and the winner then takes on the No. 1 seed for the title.

Malia Briggs stated:

“We had to wait about 15 minutes for the scores to get added up, and then it was about an hour until I was able to compete,” Briggs said. “The worst part was the wait because you had to watch everybody else bowl. But at least I knew I was guaranteed first or second place.

“So I just forced myself to take deep breaths to calm myself down. And I kept thinking: ‘This is what I practice for.’”

All that practice paid off handsomely when Briggs put together a fine score of 247 to defeat Taylor Miller of Warwick, who managed 193 pins.

Briggs said, “It was close after three frames, but when I got a turkey (3 straight strikes) in the ninth frame, I knew there was nothing she could do to beat me.”

The top 12 qualifiers from the East Regional (which had 112 entrants) and the top 12 from the West Regional (73 entrants) advanced to the state tournament, with Briggs getting in via an 8th-place finish.

At states, held at Leisure Lanes, each bowler rolled six qualifying games. Briggs, who said her current average is around 200, got hot right away with a 232 in her first game, then followed it up with games of 236, 223, 262, 213 and 173.

That gave her a total of 1,339 pins, which was +139 over the standard of 200, and was an average of 223. That earned her the No. 1 seed over Miller (1,315), Amelia Droste of Hempfield (1,289), Rayana Gonzales of CD East (1,267) and Mackenzie Livingston of Freeport (1,239).

Briggs was using a new ball, a 900 Global Harsh Reality, for states and she said, “That ball worked really well.”

Her run to the state title began in late January when she finished in the top four at a qualifier for wild cards, which are players who don’t have a high school team to bowl with. The Trojans do not have a bowling team.

Briggs, 15, began bowling when she was 10, thanks to a family that loves the sport.

“My mom plays, my dad plays, my grandfather played and now my brother plays, too,” Briggs said. “I used to play basketball, but I stopped when I decided to get serious about bowling.”

How serious? Well, her main goal is to land a Division I scholarship for bowling. Way down the road, she’d love to be good enough to play on the PWBA (Professional Women’s Bowling Association) tour.

“I think I have an opportunity for a scholarship in college,” she said. “In the meantime, I like to compete, I like to travel and I’ve met a lot of friends in bowling.”

You don’t get good at something without putting the time in, and Briggs does that.

She has a new coach, Joe Hulala, who works with her on Tuesday nights at ABC North Lanes in Harrisburg, and sometimes on weekends.

“I started with him three months ago and he’s really helped,” Briggs said. “My scores are getting better. I’m staying behind the ball and my release is better, and he’s helped my ball speed, too.”

The home lanes for Briggs is Nellie Fox Bowl and she’ll practice there four or five times a week for an hour. So that’s about 6 hours of work each week.

And that doesn’t include tournaments. Briggs is gone most weekends to some type of junior tournament, racking up valuable experience. She’s been to events all over the Mid-Atlantic, the Carolinas, in Virginia and plenty of Midwest states, and last year competed in Texas.

Her next big event is a Storm Youth Championship (SYC) tournament in Michigan in April. The national tournament, which she qualified for by winning states, will be held in June back at Leisure Lanes. And the Junior Gold Tournament, which Briggs says in the biggest in the world, is in Detroit in July.

And, in case you think her head is already spinning, there’s more.

Briggs is sponsored by Storm, which provides her balls and equipment; by Vice, for her inserts; and by Coolwick, for her apparel. She is also in the Storm Evolution program this year, in which she meets certain challenges and then posts a video about it.

And she’s a bit of a social media influencer, posting videos on YouTube and Instagram.

In fact, Briggs also took the time to design her own bowling shirt, which was then produced by Coolwick.

All this is Briggs’ way of showing that she is definitely serious about bowling.

And she has a state championship to prove it.