Jerry Ledbetter

Pierce County has an outstanding and lengthy bowling tradition, and the area has produced a long list of successful regional and national champions. Jerry Ledbetter is certainly on that list.

Ledbetter has a lengthy list of career highlights, including 18 sanctioned 300 games, including back-toback 300s at a senior tournament in Ocean Shores. He has rolled nine sanctioned 800 series, with a high of 859. Ledbetter has won the Tacoma Scratch All Events city tournament on four occasions, in addition to the Tacoma Masters and the Tacoma Senior Masters championships. Nine times he has earned Tacoma All-Star Team recognition, once as team captain, and twice he has been on the Tacoma Senior All-Star Team. He has won 19 senior scratch tournament titles in Washington and Oregon since 1998.

The biggest highlights of his bowling career came when he earned a spot on the United State National Team in 1986 and representing the country at the World Championships in Helsinki, Finland, in 1987. He was one of two senior men representing the U.S. at the 1998 Tournament of the Americas in Miami. There, he won three gold medals, a silver and a bronze. The doubles team score and four-person team score are still tournament records. He has also represented the state of Washington five times, the most by any state bowler, at the national finals where the U.S. national team is determined. Ledbetter, born on April 20, 1948 in Puyallup, has bowled in sanctioned leagues for 50 years, including 41 as an adult. He has been a member of the prestigious Tuell’s All-Star Travel League, one of the few scratch travel leagues remaining in the country, for 36 years.