The Starting Line
One of his earliest tournaments, and the honest baseline of his mental game. The ability was already there. The composure to hold it together when a game turned was not.
Tournament Overview
This one belongs near the very beginning. In April 2025, only a couple of months into competitive bowling, Arryn entered the PBA Jr. South Regional Qualifier at Bowl America Southwest in Midlothian, fifteen games of qualifying across two days against a regional field drawn from Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, West Virginia, and beyond.
He finished 10th of 11 and did not make the top-eight cut. The raw ability was already visible, a 210, a pair of 200s, block averages that climbed all weekend. What was missing does not show up in a single number: when a game turned on him, he could not turn it back. A 180 was followed by a 130, a 210 and a 198 by a 158, and the steadier bowlers at the top simply did not give those games away the way he did.
The Climb
His block average rose in each of the three blocks: 145.2 on Bill O'Neill, 180.6 on Danielle McEwan and 183.6 on EJ Tackett, a 38-pin-a-game climb from first block to last. The low games came early, a 131, a 134 and a 130 around a 180 in the opening block, and both of his games over 200, a 210 and a 201, came in the last two blocks.
The Qualifying Ladder
Qualifying, Block by Block
Final Standings
Eleven youth bowlers, fifteen qualifying games, top eight to match play. Arryn finished 10th, 72 pins behind 9th-place Dillon Luther, two spots below the top-eight cut. Several names here, including champion-to-be Cameron Bennett and Ean Laws, would cross his path again as he climbed.
Why This One Stays
It would have been easy to leave this page off the site. A 10th-place finish, months into the sport. It stays because it is the baseline, and not the physical one. The hands and the ball speed were already there. What this weekend exposed was the mental game: the maturity to absorb a bad frame or a bad game and keep bowling. He did not have it yet, and the bowlers who beat him were not always more talented, they were just steadier when it got hard. Everything Arryn built after this, the composure that later carried twenty-game grinds and stepladder finals, started from not having it here.
Raw talent, no mental game yet. The talent stayed. The composure had to be built, and this is where that work began.