Seneca Valley graduate Tim Pfeifer, a Robert Morris sophomore, won the men's title of the U.S. Bowling Congress Intercollegiate singles championships at AMF Pin Palace in Huntsville, Ala., May 22.

Pfeifer, 20, qualified to be among the 15 best college bowlers in the country by averaging 205 in a 12-game preliminary round.

As the No. 2 seed after the qualifying round, Pfeifer drew a first-round bye before defeating three opponents in head-to-head match play.

Pfeifer defeated Jason Weaver of Penn State in the finals, claiming three games in a best-of-five match. Pfeifer opened with a 225-152 loss before winning three of the next four games: 184-183, 179-159, 188-222 and 189-178.

Pfeifer defeated South Florida's Stephen Alessi in the quarterfinals and William Haverland of West Texas A&M in the semifinals. Pfeifer said there is a different approach when the competition gets down to head-to-head match play rather than trying to out score the entire field.

"You approach a qualifying block as though it is like a marathon," he said, "and match play is like a shorter sprint where it doesn't matter what your score is in relation to anyone else in the field except the person you're bowling against."

Lane conditions play a huge factor in match play.

"There are things you can do to manipulate the lane [conditions] to your advantage against different people," Pfeifer said. "My goal during the match-play portion was to make the lanes score as low as possible. I figured my chances of beating people were better the lower the scores were because I'm a little more accurate than a lot of the players in the field were."

Pfeifer used several different balls during match play, which had a bearing on the lane conditions.

"If you take a piece of sand paper to a ball and sand it down, it will absorb the oil off the lanes," he said. "You can create different spots on the lane where there is more hook than there should be or less hook than there should be."

A Cranberry resident, Pfeifer began bowling as a preschooler, but did not begin competing in individual tournaments until he was in high school. He competed in various regional and national USBC youth events in recent years, Seneca Valley does not have a bowling team.

Bowling is not a WPIAL-sanctioned sport, but there is a high school league in Western Pennsylvania for club teams. It also is a club sport at Robert Morris.

Pfeifer's biggest accomplishment before this was finishing second in a field of 990 at the USBC Junior Gold 23-and-under tournament last summer.

"Winning the collegiate nationals is the biggest thing I've ever won, but finishing second at the Junior Gold championships to earn a spot on the Junior National team is the biggest thing I've ever accomplished in bowling," Pfeifer said.

By finishing second at the Junior Gold tournament, Pfeifer earned a membership on the U.S. junior national team. There are seven males and seven females on the youth national team.

"They represent our country in international competition," Pfeifer said. "I got back from training camp for a week with the national team [in Colorado] four days before I left Huntsville."

He credits national team coach Geri Edwards for preparing him for the collegiate nationals.

Tim's father, Carl, served as the Robert Morris coach this year. His father has been a longtime competitive bowler.

"My dad played more of an adviser role," Pfeifer said. "Our coach resigned about a week before our first tournament."