Spanaway Lake’s Tamia Yeager bowls first-career perfect 300 game. ‘Nothing can stop me’
Tamia Yeager sensed a career performance on the horizon. Spanaway Lake’s star bowler arrived at Tacoma’s Paradise Lanes for a Dec. 19 match, and with her grandparents in attendance, asked one simple request before her first frame: “Can you please take videos?”
The senior All-American oozed confidence in warmups, lined up to perfection ahead of the 4A SPSL home clash with South Kitsap. And never before in Yeager’s career was there a better time to keep the cameras rolling.
Strike, strike, strike. An opening turkey for Yeager. That wasn’t rare for the defending state champion.
“But once you start getting six, seven, eight… that’s when you know… I can do anything,” Yeager told The News Tribune. “I started getting really into it. It started to matter more.”
Humming “Defying Gravity,” the prominent track from the recent Wicked release, Yeager couldn’t miss with mental reminders to remain calm and in the moment. Strike, strike, strike.
And at last, perfection: Yeager completed her first-ever 300 game with a dozen consecutive strikes at Paradise Lanes, an unforgettable moment in her early career.
“Around the fifth or sixth frame, I was like, ‘Wow, nothing can stop me,” Yeager said. “I just felt awesome. Super lined up and just very confident. And then we got down to the eighth or ninth frame… I (thought) if I get this one, then there’s no way I’m not going to shoot 300.”
Yeager’s previous career-high? Just one pin shy of perfection, a 299 after leaving the center-five on her 12th and final roll in her junior season earlier this year.
“I was more bummed out than anything, and I hadn’t really thought about it,” she said. “It wasn’t in the front of my mind, like ‘I’m going to try and shoot 300’ … It just happened.”
A four-year varsity bowler at Spanaway Lake, Yeager captured the 2024 WIAA 3A individual state bowling title with 1,256 pins in six games (the Sentinels finished runner-up as a program). The two-time Dexter High School All-American was named last year’s team captain and signed with Vanderbilt University earlier this month.
Yeager can add a perfect game to what’s already a long list of accolades – so what’s next?
“I have many goals,” Yeager chuckled. “I definitely want to get another state title. That was just thrilling to do last year, to be able to be able to represent my school and my community in that way, so that’s always at the top of my list (in) high school. ... I want to be First Team All-American. I want to be (in the) starting five for college. I want to win a national championship.
“I guess I’m really striving for the stars right now.”
This story was originally published December 29, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
