Sara Harvey follows through on a throw during a Upper Peninsula Bowling Conference match for her Ishpeming-Negaunee girls team during this past season. (Photo courtesy Andrea Harvey)

ISHPEMING — As the weather heats up and the calendar turns to July, a young woman’s thoughts turn to … bowling?

They sure do if her name is Sara Harvey, a 17-year-old soon-to-be senior at Ishpeming High School.

A three-year member of the school’s cooperative bowling team with Negaunee High School, she will be competing against some of the country’s best youth bowlers at the Junior Gold Championships, this year being held in the general Green Bay, Wisconsin, area.

This national youth tourney has been held since 1998 at venues all over the U.S., ranging from Las Vegas to Orlando, Florida, to Dallas-Fort Worth to Buffalo, New York.

Some of the bowlers who have been top finishers over the years include PBA Hall of Famers Sean Rash and Bill O’Neill, star men’s pros E.J. Tackett, Marshall Kent, Chris Via and Rhino Page, and women’s stars Shannon Pluhowsky, Danielle McEwan and Mellissa Bellinder.

Harvey will actually be in the Green Bay area for more than a week, from July 11-20, as she’ll also compete in the associated U.S. Youth Open, also in Green Bay.

So did she just decide to bowl this tournament and get her parents to make the trip with her for about 10 days?

Well, it wasn’t quite that simple.

Harvey made an even longer trip than the Green Bay jaunt to the downstate Pontiac suburb of Waterford to bowl in a qualifying tournament at a center called 300 Lanes.

That was on May 4, where only two out of the nine bowlers at the qualifier advanced to the nationals. Of course, she was part of that elite group, averaging 168 on the what is described as quite tough oil conditions to lead all girls in the under-18 age division.

She totaled 1,005 for the six games, rolling 152, 164, 156, 174, 145 and finishing with a real rush with 214, using four strikes in a row to better every other competitor by at least 39 pins that game.

That final game lifted her from third place — and out of the qualifying for Green Bay — to the top position by just 14 pins ahead of Caitlyn Kober of the Cincinnati suburb of Lebanon, Ohio, and more importantly, 29 pins ahead of the first bowler out of the qualifying, Brooke Morrow of the Detroit suburb New Baltimore.

A look at a biography for Morrow shows she was a senior last school year and plans to bowl collegiately at downstate Alma College.

Harvey will be bowling in the girls under-18 division at Junior Gold at two centers, Buzz Social in Suamico and Bowlero Super Bowl in Appleton.

Her U.S. Youth Open bowling is scheduled for Green Bay center Willow Creek Lanes.

Her explanation about the format for national Junior Gold bowling seems rather exhausting — bowling 16 games over four days, then cutting the field down, bowl some more and cut the field some more.

The finals have been televised over at least the past few years on one of the major TV sports channels, either ESPN, Fox or CBS Sports.

All of this has come about in a sport she only casually participated in until she started with the Ishpeming High School team.

“I started bowling as a freshman, and I never really had bowled before,” Harvey said, adding that she’d been to a handful of bowling outings in her younger days. “I had been a basketball player.”

She stated that she had lost her interest in the sport of bouncing balls, but her parents, including mom Andrea Harvey, wanted her involved in some sort of outside-of-school activity in the cold winter months we’re so famous for in the Upper Peninsula.

“I thought bowling would be good, and I found out I really liked it,” Harvey said.

She worked to become one of the better girl bowlers in the U.P. Bowling Conference. After having participated in the MHSAA regionals each year, this past February she broke through, advancing out of the regionals and on to the state finals.

“I was second place at the (individual bowling) regionals,” she said, adding that she averaged about 194 for six qualifying games, which was easily good enough to make it to the Division 2 finals.

She also made the qualifying cut at the UPBC girls singles finals in February, again averaging in the 190s for the first part of the event. That advanced her to match play, where she won a match before being eliminated by a teammate, Miley Phillips, in the second of four rounds.

Asked what her best games ever were, she thought a bit and said she’d bowled a 257 on “a house shot,” the lane oil pattern that creates a lot of forgiveness and is typical for most adult leagues.

She’s also had as high as 244 in her tournaments, where there are oil patterns not as hard as the pros, but also not nearly as easy as a house shot, either.

Harvey said she’d like to continue bowling in college, and actually has already had one formal offer, plus being in communication with — get this — 40 schools.

Needless to say, she takes the game seriously.

“I’ve been trying to bowl every day to get ready for Junior Gold,” Harvey said.

She has five bowling balls she uses, though she only takes “three or four” to any bowling event.

Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.