As the saying goes, records are made to be broken. However, College senior Mandy Pezzano and her family have one record they hope will stand.
The Pezzano family is the first and only family to have a grandfather, four sons and grandchild each bowl a 300 -- a perfect game.
Now Pezzano is creating a name for herself beyond her family's prestigious history.
Last year she placed ninth at the United States Bowling Congress Collegiate Singles Championship. In doing so, she became the first Ivy League student ever to participate in the competition.
Pezzano comes from a family of bowlers. Her father, Chuck Pezzano, Jr., is the director of the Junior Bowlers Tour. The tour runs 120 competitions a year from Maine to Maryland and holds an annual competition in Las Vegas.
Her grandfather, Chuck Pezzano, Sr., is a renowned bowler. Chuck attended Rutgers, where he became the first collegiate national champion in 1950. He was inducted into the Professional Bowler's Association's first Hall of Fame class in 1975. He has since been inducted into nine other bowling halls of fame. There is even a Bowling Writers Association of America Chuck Pezzano Scholarship.
Mandy Pezzano started on the lanes when she was two, and was already developing her stroke at the the age of four.
Her father claims that she picked up bowling due to constant exposure. However, Mandy says her passion for the game is all her own. She was not pushed by any family member to pursue bowling; it was her choice.
"Not until she was four or five could she actually throw the ball," Pezzano, Jr., said. I "just watched her and tried to keep the ball out of the gutter."
Penn does not have a bowling team at the varsity or club level, so Mandy did not come to Penn for athletics. She did, however, pitch for the softball team as a freshman.
"With the exception of very few, the good schools don't have bowling," Pezzano said. "They tend to be the big schools in the middle of the country."
In the latest Bowling Writers Association of America collegiate rankings, the top five women's teams are Wichita State, Morehead State, Lindenwood, Pikeville and Fresno State.
"For some reason, smart people don't bowl at all," Pezzano said.
But Pezzano is an exception to her own observed trend. She is a philosophy major who intends to go to law school next year. She was recently given the Billy Welu Award, which recognizes a collegiate bowler for their mix of athletic and academic accomplishment.
The senior spends only four days a week on campus. She travels with her father every weekend to help run and participate in the Junior Bowlers Tour -- which features an average of 70 to 80 bowlers ages 22 and under at each tournament. She is currently first in the tournament's power rankings and first in the Pennsylvania Conference, where she averages 215 per game.
"I just won my first two titles the past two weekends," Pezzano said. She bowled a 257 and 244, respectively, to win.
"It's a kind of tragedy with me in title matches; me doing terrible things and kids bowling 300's against me."
Despite not getting the opportunity to practice much, Mandy believes she has actually become a better bowler since coming to Penn.
One example of her strength is her recent accomplishment of surpassing 800 points over the course of three successive games. She started off by bowling a 267 and a 297.
"I was very nervous in that last game because I knew I needed a good game," she said.
She got her good game, bowling a 258, making 822 over all.
While the construction and presence of Strikes bowling alley originally excited Pezzano, she has not been impressed by the establishment and does not bowl there.
"It's not really a bowling alley," she said.
"I tried working there," she added. "It's worth working a crappy job to bowl for free. [But] they don't understand bowling; they don't oil the lanes."
For Pezzano, law school is her first priority. There is no professional women's circuit, and there is not a whole lot of money for professional bowlers, so she has to continue to bowl for fun.
As her father said, "she's got bigger challenges ahead of her."
