By Jashvina Shah
Like many children, Jessie Garzio grew up playing sports.
But Garzio, a Ewing High School student, spent her childhood wandering around bowling lanes rather than running the bases. She spent a lot of time at the bowling alley, whether it was for a birthday party or her own personal enjoyment.
Garzio started bowling when she was five years old, and stuck with the sport. Now a senior, she’s leading the Blue Devils bowling team to one of its best seasons. She’s bowled a 6,324 set this season and serves as the 11-0 team’s anchor with the highest average.
“She’s the sparkplug, she’s the starter,” head coach Mike Tucker said. “[She’s] always encouraging the other players, always a good sportsman [and] never wants to take any advantage whatsoever in any sort of wrong way.”
Garzio, whose father’s uncle was long-time Ewing municipal clerk Jake Garzio, grew up with three brothers and learned competitiveness through them. She liked to watch her older brother, Josh, compete in wrestling matches when he was at Ewing High.
“They’re always there with support and they’re always like you can do this, you can do better, don’t get down on yourself,” Garzio said.
She has already looked into Division I scholarships for bowling, and this season could help her search.
“It’s so exciting and thrilling knowing it’s the last big year I can have before college,” Garzio said. “Hopefully this can be a really big come through so it looks good for college, because our boys team has been doing well the past couple of years as well. I’m just hoping that we can be on the same level as the boys.”
Despite her own impressive individual statistics, Garzio is—and always has been—focused on the team’s fate.
“[She’s] just a die-hard team player, only wants to win, only wants the team to win,” Tucker said. “She’s not too focused on her scores, but she’s focused on the team winning, which is a pretty surprising thing for a young person.”
While Garzio anchors the team during matches, she also anchors away from the lanes as a co-captain. It’s a role Garzio earned her sophomore year, and she relishes mentoring her teammates, lifting them up and keeping them together.
“She’s grown into a leadership role by sort of mentoring the kids that aren’t as skillful as she is,” Tucker said. “You have to be very diplomatic when you’re giving constrictive criticism to other people, especially if they’re your peers, so that has been a gradual process where you say less and you do more.”
Garzio is in her fourth season with the squad, and she said she has learned how to stay focused and prepare better. But her focus has remained one of her defining characteristics.
“She’s pretty much a self-starter. She gets goals, she goes, ‘What do I have to do to achieve the goals?’ Then she goes out and achieves them,” Tucker said. “Obstacles are just something to either go through, around or over. She doesn’t let herself get stopped by the things that might stop relatively normal student athletes. She doesn’t make any excuses for it.”
She especially does not like to lose.
“Her focus is so strong, it’s so intense and there’s no nonsense with her,” Tucker said. “It’s time to bowl, we’re going to bowl and we’re going to win and it just drives her mad if other people don’t share that sentiment, and that resonates with me.”
Garzio loves the competition bowling creates, especially the unknown factors that often impact matches.
“You never know what’s going to be out there, you never know what to expect or how the ball’s going to react, what the lane conditions are going to be like,” Garzio said. “I love the competition about it.”
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