BOWLING

Girls Bowling: South Plainfield's Neal is CN/HNT Bowler of Year

Chuck O'Donnell
Correspondent

You could be forgiven for thinking that Lanasia Neal’s hopes of reaching the final round in the final event of her storied career were dashed when she opened the Tournament of Champions with a 173 and sat far back in a deep and talented field.

Inside the senior South Plainfield standout, who won the Tournament of Champions as a sophomore and advanced to the stepladder stage as a junior, beats the heart of a fierce competitor.

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Neal started her improbable rally with a 225 and followed it with a 215, a 218 and a 232. And undaunted by a 49-pin deficit for the final spot in the finals, she proceeded to roll an 11-strike 267 to complete a 717 set and leap into fourth place.

Her season and career ended with a 228-212 loss to fifth-seeded Olivia Ostrander of Warren Hills, but Neal walked away with her head held high, secure in the knowledge that she battled to the end despite the odds stacked against her.

“I’m not the kind of person to give up because I’m never completely out of it,” said Neal, The Courier News and Home News Tribune Girls Bowler of the Year. “I know what I’m capable of doing.

 

"So, let’s say I bowl a bad game. I just shake it off. What I used to do is I would bowl a bad game and lose it and say, ‘Oh my gosh I won’t be in it.’ Now I keep a positive attitude throughout the whole tournament.”

Neal, whose 208 average was the fourth-highest in the state this season, says she also has been aided by a mental imaging technique she started using earlier this winter. It was especially helpful at the Greater Middlesex Conference Championships when she pulled out a 180-179 victory over Victoria Stasicky of Monroe on her final ball.

South Plainfield's Lanasia Neal, the Courier News/Home News Tribune Girls Bowler of the Year, displays some the the awards she won this season.

“If you see yourself doing good, you will do good,” said Neal, who closes her career with three GMC titles. “It actually worked. That’s how I won. (I was imagining) holding the trophy and the celebrating part, and when you go to bowl, you imagine yourself rolling strikes.”

Neal has a great support system behind her. She has learned a lot from South Plainfield coach Brian Panek and picked up even more from the tutoring of Matt O’Grady, a champion on the PBA Tour. 

And she comes from a family of avid bowlers. Her father, Leonard Neal, was a standout at Newark’s Weequahic High School and her uncle Peter is a member of the Union County Bowling Hall of Fame. Her grandfather bowled his first perfect game at age 75.

Leonard Neal sometimes reminisces about the first time he brought his daughter bowling. She was 4, and she would use two hands to push the ball down the lane. He sometimes can’t believe that little girl grew up to become the first bowler in South Plainfield High School history to roll a perfect game.

Leonard Neal said the family sometimes gets into playful conversations and begins to compare who has the most perfect games. They all have to admit, however, that Lanasia will likely end up as the best bowler in the family and rack up the most perfect games. After all, she has two already.

“We’re just really proud of Lanasia,” Leonard Neal said. “We all just sit back and watch her. She’s already surpassed all of us because she’s so young. She has a long way to go. We all just sit back and watch her now.”

Colleges are watching her, too. She plans to announce next month which college she will be heading to in the fall. She wants to study sports management and says her power of persuasion would make her the perfect agent for NBA and/or NFL stars one day.

“I’m really good at advertising, like talking and getting what I want, basically,” Neal said. “I can convince people to do things if they don’t want to do it. I feel I could be a good brand ambassador. I can advertise people and make them money and at the same time make me money.”

Wherever she ends up next fall, Panek isn’t surprised that schools are eager for her to come join their bowling program. 

“What makes her so good is that her form is impeccable, and she does the same thing every single time,” he said. “That’s why coaches are interested in her, because she does have that form and that consistency.”