Cassia Montgomery didn’t have high expectations heading into her first trip to the YBC national championships, but she blew through any expectations that she did have.

The local bowler claimed a bronze medal in the bantam girls division at nationals on Monday after a strong performance throughout the weekend.

“It made me feel proud of myself because I wanted to do my best and I never thought I would ever be that good, but I guess I did better than I thought I would,” said Montgomery.

“Going into this year, I didn’t think I was doing so well, but I guess I was and I didn’t see it.”

Over the course of the three-day competition, Montgomery won 16 of her 22 games, scoring an average of 187.86 points per game, to help her onto the podium behind gold medal winner Vanessa Berry from Timmins, ON and silver medalist Mikayla Juricic from Calgary, AB.

Montgomery felt that her consistency was the biggest contributing factor to her coming home with some hardware.

“I had some really good games on Saturday and Monday, lots of 200 games, and there was lots of really competition that I had to bowl good to beat, but I was really good with my consistency and putting pressure on the other girls, they get a strike and I get a strike,” she said.

“I had a couple of games where they weren’t so good, but most of the time I felt like I was doing pretty good.”

This was the 11-year-old’s first trip to nationals and she said that she’s coming away very happy with the experience that she was able to gain over the three days.

“It was really cool, I made a lot of friends and they were all really nice,” she said.  “It was just cool being there and seeing everybody that I saw.”

Montgomery was happy to see her hard work in practice pay off and she added that getting a bronze medal this year has just made her even more hungry heading into next year.

“I want to try and get a bit better so that I can either silver or gold next year,” said Montgomery.

The South Hill Bowling Centre was also represented by the junior boys team of Andrew Hedin, Leigham McLeod, Josh Warner and Hunter Shaw.  They ended up finishing in fifth place with a combined average score of 767.81.  

The boys team went 10-11 during the three days at nationals.