PITTSFIELD — A 17-year-old bowler from the Pittsfield Bowling Center will dominate women’s candlepin bowling in the next few years, according to Dave Bowden, a champion bowler in his own right at the Pittsfield lanes.

Amidst the din of falling pins and rolling balls, Bowden’s opinion is echoed by many bowlers waiting their turn in the weeknight league play.

The petite and impish Casey Murray has endeared herself to the adult bowlers in Pittsfield. For five years, she has bowled the local lanes capturing one junior title after another.

On league nights, she bowls side-by-side with the older bowlers, observing their techniques and sharpening her own — and cementing special friendships. She averages a score of 119 with all her league play combined, she said. That’s just one pin off the average of many male bowlers, she said.

Last month, Murray brought home the girls’ 1999 International Candlepin Bowling Association’s Junior Bowling Classic Championship. It was just one of seven similar accomplishments in her bowling career in the past year.

She is only the second Maine teenage girl to bring home the title in the 21 years of the association’s history.

It is not simply the quality of her bowling or her wins that make her special to the older bowlers. They are her friends and mentors. They eagerly talk about her potential.

It’s a subject she will share with them now. But two years ago, potential was the farthest thing from her mind. That was the year she dropped out of high school at Pittsfield’s Maine Central Institute.

Three varsity sports a year while maintaining academic high honors were her undoing, she said.

“I was burned out,” she said. “I was following everyone else’s goals. Not mine. I had friends at games and practice, but outside of school I didn’t.”

Murray set herself apart from the teen social scene she said, because “I wouldn’t party, drink or do drugs. And I still don’t.”

During the period she was out of school, she often spent time at the Pittsfield Bowling Center, sometimes bowling 10 or 12 strings a day.

“It became very important to me,” she said with solemn conviction. “It helped me get my life back on track. When it comes so naturally to you, it is a stress reliever.

“I went back to school because of bowling,” she added.

The daily practice honed her skills, eased her burnout and made her a regular target for Center owner Sessa Menendez, who wanted to see her return to school and continue competing in the junior bowling circuit.

Attending school is a requirement of junior bowling competitions.

“I guess he’s been like a dad to me,” she said of Menendez. “He’s played an important part in my life. He’s my cheerleader, and he’s always telling me to get my head on straight. He and [his wife] Marie are dear friends. And Dave and Lois Bowden, [adult bowlers at the center] they’re always cheering me on.

The support of her friends at the Center is special, but “My best friends are still my Mom and my boyfriend,” she said.

Larry Small, the alternative education teacher in SAD 48, is also special to Murray. She returned to school this year in the neighboring school district, when she moved with her mother and younger brother from Pittsfield to St. Albans. Small’s program of individualized education for a class of 10 students is the reason she will graduate from high school this spring.

“He’s a great guy and really dedicated to helping us achieve our goals,” she said of Small. “Now it’s my choice. I can do my work the way I want to, and I can achieve at bowling the way I want.”

Murray bowls three nights a week

“She’s a sweetheart,” Ed Hall, a league bowler at the Center, volunteers, “She bowls for me Friday nights. And she bowls anchor.”

The position, he explains, often requires her to pull the team ahead from a low-scoring position.

Now Murray talks about life after bowling at the same time she acknowledges the sport is her lifeline. The scholarship she earned with her ICBA Junior Championship can be put to use next year when she enrolls in the Kennebec Valley Technical College with her eye on a career in respiratory therapy.

“I don’t know what I would do without it,” she said in awe of her own devotion to the sport. “I’ve never thought about it. I think I would be bored out of my mind. There is just nothing to do around here.”