A Lane Change : Soto Tries to Reverse Her Fortunes After Bumpy Start on Bowling Tour

Laurie Soto is a professional bowler, and before we go any further let’s get all of the you-know-whats out of the way right at the start.

* No, she doesn’t bowl only in her spare time.

* No, if working conditions aren’t satisfactory Soto doesn’t go on strike.

* No, she wasn’t raised in poverty and didn’t take up bowling to get out of the gutter.

* And no, the professionals don’t have a big dance each year called the Bowling Ball.

To some, bowling always has had a tainted image. Name one other sport in which participants willingly stick their feet into someone else’s sweat-soaked shoes.

And who, at the mere mention of bowling, is not struck by the image of a somewhat disheveled-looking guy named Lou sucking on a long-neck bottle of beer and a Camel cigarette every Thursday night while wearing a shirt with the name of an auto salvage yard on the back, bragging to his buddies that he hasn’t taken the little woman out to dinner since Lyndon Johnson’s Administration?

Well, bowling really isn’t like that everywhere. Construction of sparkling new bowling centers has turned the sport into a socially acceptable form of recreation. And the emergence of the Ladies Professional Bowling Tour and its hefty tournament purses has made the sport lucrative for the top women bowlers. Lisa Wagner of Palmetto, Fla., earned a nifty $40,000 paycheck last Saturday for winning the LPBT U. S. Open.

And Soto, a 25-year-old who was born in Van Nuys and starred in volleyball, softball and basketball at Canyon High, wants a piece of that action.

“I’m going to stay with it until I make it to the top,” Soto said. “I think I can do it. I really believe that down the road, I’ll do it.”

Thus far, however, the road has been as pleasant for Soto as the high-speed navigation of a washed-out mountain switchback. At night. With livestock roaming across the crumbling pavement.

She turned pro last year and bowled in seven tournaments. She . . . well, let LPBT statistician and spokesman Bill Vint tell it: “She didn’t do much of anything last year,” he said. “She didn’t have a good year at all. She didn’t even cash a check.”

That last part, of course, is not true. Soto cashed plenty of checks. Unfortunately, they were all written on her own account. She earned no money. Her best finish was 41st in a tournament in Grafton, Va., and, as we all know, finishing 41st in Grafton, Va., can cause a person to break out in many things, but song is not one of them.

“It was pretty depressing,” Soto said. “I just couldn’t execute. I was lost. I just wanted to come home and practice and learn how to bowl on a top level.”

Soto began bowling at age 9, making regular Friday night trips to the Granada Lanes in Granada Hills with her grandparents, who offered Laurie and her sisters 50 cents if they scored 100 or more and a dollar for a score exceeding 150. “Pretty soon they said forget that,” Laurie said. “It was getting expensive.”

When the family moved to Canyon Country, Soto couldn’t find a good junior league. So she joined a men’s league. “I loved competing with men,” she said. “It made my game so much better.”

The competitive nerve Soto toughened through bowling helped her in other sports. She was voted Canyon’s female athlete of the year in 1981. But after high school, she put away her bowling balls and went about the business of life. She studied for a year at College of the Canyons, then took a job as a loan processor for a bank in Tarzana. But all the while she itched for the chance to lace up the bowling shoes. Last year, she joined a league in Canoga Park and returned to the lanes.

A month later, she took time off from work and paid her way into tournaments in Virginia, Illinois, Colorado and Nevada. The return on her $3,000 investment--which included air fare, food and lodging for two months--was zero. She returned to California and began practicing. Three hours a day, six or seven days a week, for two months. And she learned how to bowl.

“Last year I knew nothing about bowling at that level,” she said. “Lane conditions, choosing the right ball for each lane condition, all the things that the top women learned long ago.”

When a lane is heavily oiled, for example, bowlers use a softer, or dull-finish, ball. Dry lanes require a harder plastic and highly polished ball.

The practice has begun to pay off, although Soto certainly isn’t about to lay waste to the LPBT. In her first tournament of 1988, in Fort Meyers, Fla., she finished 14th and earned $1,075. The next week she finished 20th and earned $870. Her third tournament brought her a $225 check. She was, finally, covering most of her expenses. Until last week’s U. S. Open when she finished 207th out of 239 bowlers.

“What a disappointment that was,” Soto said. “It offered the most money and I turned in my worst performance. My timing was just way off and I couldn’t recover. It was pretty disappointing.”

The winter LPBT has ended and tournaments don’t resume until July. In the meantime, Soto will bowl in the World Wide Women’s Professional Tour, which isn’t worldwide at all, with tournaments scheduled in Palm Springs and Orange County and Northern California that offer prizes of $800-$1,000 per event.

“I’ll bowl in these tournaments and I’ll keep on learning,” Soto said. “One day, I know I’ll make it. I’m determined to stick with it until it pays off.”

Soto knows it won’t be easy. She knows she’s got a long way to go. But she’s already beaten the worst curse of bowling.

She owns her own bowling shoes.