Team From Bowling Academy in East Providence Wins Nationals

Three years ago, most wouldn’t have expected to see Colby Miller bowling again.

The East Providence resident had been bowling since he was six. But in 2008, he was hit by a car on Pawtucket Avenue.

The incident kept Miller out of school for a month in a wheelchair, his mother, Lynn Miller, said. And he missed three or four months of bowling.

But Miller, 16, recovered enough to not only bowl again, but win some national championships doing it.

“He didn’t miss a beat,” Lynn Miller said.

The East Providence High School student was one of five members of a team from the Bowling Academy on Taunton Avenue who competed earlier this month at the National Duckpin Youth Championships in Maryland.

The rest of the team was comprised of Amanda Duarte, 16; Brandon Gaudreau,16;  Mike Kirby, 21; and Mike DiQuinzio, who just turned 22. Team members have long bowled together in the Bowling Academy’s youth league.

“Bowling Academy always has teams going to the Nationals,” Gaudreau said. “Each year it’s a different place.”

Tension was high during the final game on June 25 at the AMF Southwest in Maryland, said Lynn Miller, who also coaches her son’s team.  

“They’re so serious about the game,” Lynn Miller said.

Parents were running back and forth between the games to check on scores. Toward the end of the third game in the series, Lynn Miller said she was worried because no one on the team had gotten any strikes or spares in one frame.

“It started getting a little hairy,” Lynn Miller said. “We had no idea what they other teams were doing.”

In the end, the team earned the highest score in its division in the three-game series, winning the title by 139 pins, she said.

Colby Miller also won four separate awards, including one that includes a $500 scholarship.

“They held a nice, steady pace,” Lynn Miller said. “They did what they had to do, and then some.”