Whether on video or in person, the first time anyone outside her family sees Dannielle Henderson on the lanes, it becomes quite apparent that she is unlike any other female bowler they have seen. 

Throwing the ball two-handed — something very few women do — and being African American is enough to make her unique on the competitive bowling landscape. Add her power and speed, and she’s already drawing comparisons to some of the men on the Professional Bowlers Association Tour. 

“It was difficult, and it was strange, but after a while I got used to it and got better,” Henderson said of her initial switch to the two-handed style after having begun bowling more conventionally. 

“If she’s the start of revolutionizing the women’s game, there will be a lot more to come,” said Shannon O’Keefe, Henderson’s coach at Jacksonville State. “Two-handed bowling hasn’t taken off for women yet. It’s just harder because we have anatomy that potentially gets in the way of the swing when you have both hands on the ball.

“It’s really been challenging to find two-handed female bowlers who can succeed not just on the rev rate but know where it’s going. When we watched Dannielle, we watched two full squads at Junior Gold and she was not throwing it all over the place and seemed to be a decent spare shooter, and she wasn’t even a spare shooter at that point.

“There are obviously things to work on and, like everyone else, she’s still working on them so it’s baby steps,” O’Keefe added. “I think my favorite thing is we were bowling someone and she had a ridiculous strike and I leaned over to Bryan and said, ‘Have fun trying to beat that the next four years!’ She gets everyone in the building’s attention when she bowls.”

Never heard of Dannielle Henderson? Neither had most people outside the St. Louis area until PBA star Kyle Sherman saw her practicing for an August 2020 tournament at nearby St. Charles Lanes. At the time, she had just turned 15 years old. 

“I was taken aback because I had never seen a girl bowl two-handed with such power,” Sherman recalls. “She just didn’t have power from being a girl. She had power from being two-handed. Someone throwing it 18 miles per hour with a large rev rate, I had never seen a young lady do that before. She’s extremely athletic.”

Sherman walked up to her father Donnie and raved about what he saw. Clearly, Sherman surmised, whoever was helping her was doing a great job. But the fact was, she never had any coaching — including from Donnie or her mom Cynthia Gill. Neither parent knew anything about the sport.

“I didn’t know who he was, but my kids did,” Donnie said. “He said, ‘I would like the opportunity to show her a few things.’ I said, ‘Sure.’ I asked the kids (Dannielle and brother DJ). They agreed and, over the summer for 3-4 weeks, he would meet them on Thursdays and would give them some technical knowledge they never had before. Later, he invited her to compete in a women’s tournament he and Brad [Miller] were hosting. She did quite well.” 

Besides the technical aspects of the sport, Sherman said he advised Dannielle and Donnie on how to handle any future fame that may come her way.

“I said, ‘You may throw good but you have a long way to go,’” Sherman said. “‘Don’t try to get so good so fast. Just work on it.’ She’s an amazing person, as polite as can be. She’s super nice and someone who works really, really hard and has a good support system. She’ll do great things if she wants to.”

That same day, Sherman also mentioned Henderson to the O’Keefes. At the time, they were coaching at McKendree University. It turns out that Shannon was bowling in the same tournament, giving her and Bryan the opportunity to watch Henderson. 

“I was just like, ‘Wow.’ I had never seen anyone like that,” Bryan said. “One of the big differences from the female side is that, unfortunately, a lot of them struggle to generate enough speed to make it at the highest level. There’s a lot of motion that goes with that power and RPMs. When I saw her for the first time, I said, ‘Holy cow, that looked different.’

“Little did I know she had just turned 15. She was super young and a freshman in high school, so we put her name on the back burner. We didn’t keep in contact with her but remembered the name. Then we were fortunate enough to be at the one Junior Gold she bowled (in 2022). We were at her first squad. I told Shannon, ‘Hey, that’s the girl from St. Louis.’ That’s when we started recruiting her. It was that one Junior Gold that sparked the memory of, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember this girl.’”

The 5-foot-7 Henderson, who placed 32nd in the Junior Gold U18 division, committed to McKendree on her official visit and was prepared to join the two-time National Collegiate Athletic Association champion for the 2023-2024 season. Then the O’Keefes decided to start the program at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. They told Dannielle and Donnie, who asked how she could follow them. 

“We were fortunate that even though she committed to a school in her backyard 45 minutes away, she decided to come to one eight hours away,” said Bryan, whose official title at Jacksonville State is coordinator of athletic operations for bowling while Shannon is head coach. “But we’re super happy she decided to try and develop within our program.

“She has quite the potential. She’s not completely unique, but she has the potential to be incredible,” Bryan added.

Donnie said Dannielle chose McKendree and then Jacksonville State because of the reputation of the O’Keefes. 

“Dannielle is very happy she went there,” Donnie said. 

Dannielle Henderson’s journey to Jacksonville State began in the St. Louis suburb of Florissant. When her brother DJ became interested in basketball in fifth grade, so did she in third grade. 

“We were always at the gym,” Dannielle said. “I just followed him there because, if I didn’t, I would be bored. It was the same with bowling. I had nowhere else to go, and I was at the bowling alley over the summer and I just had to watch and found it boring to watch so I decided to try it. I didn’t understand it. I just watched him throw the ball down the lane.”

When DJ burned out on basketball upon entering Pattonville High School in nearby Maryland Heights, he decided to try bowling in a youth league at Crest Bowl in Florissant. By age 14 and in seventh grade, Dannielle followed suit and again the next year on the high school team. 

“Believe it or not, his bowling knowledge came from watching YouTube videos [of Jason Belmonte],” Donnie said of DJ “Then he physically started bowling.

“His progression was different than Dannielle’s. He started learning and getting it right away and within three months was winning tournaments and everything. Dannielle struggled for the first seven or eight months. She went from basketball to bowling and bowling is so technical she didn’t get the technical parts. Physically she blended in, but neither of them had coaches. Donnie was learning on his own and she was just kind of watching him.”

Then a fellow parent told Donnie that DJ was consistently hitting the pocket. 

“I said, ‘What is that?’” Donnie said. “He was explaining what he was talking about and said, ‘You should put your son in this tournament called the Gateway.’ I didn’t know anything about it, but I put him in there and it’s a monthly tournament and he won his first two. That’s how it all got started.”

In the beginning, Dannielle just bowled for fun. But once she saw DJ’s progression, she decided to take it more seriously. After initially bowling the conventional way, she switched to two hands like her brother.  

“When she started bowling with two hands, that’s when it all started coming together,” Donnie said. “After she struggled with releasing the ball and all of that, the youth league coordinator at Crest — Jessie Mapp — asked her, ‘Why don’t you try doing what your brother does?’ She did it and she fell in love with it. After that, Dannielle was literally bowling every day. She wanted to be good just like her brother.”

Dannielle competed in Gateway and other events and, following a slow start, her scores improved once she figured out how to control the ball. To give her a taste of top competition, Donnie took her to a PWBA regional event in Iowa just before the pandemic hit in March 2020. She finished 32nd and later competed in regionals in Kentucky and St. Charles. 

“I didn’t feel a bunch of pressure from it. I was so young,” she said. “I don’t think it made me nervous because I didn’t know who I was bowling. Now I know who Shannon O’Keefe is. I know who Stefanie Johnson is. I know the pros and their capabilities. Back then, I didn’t do my research of this bowler or that bowler. I didn’t know who they were. I was just bowling to compete and I wanted to kill everybody in there. I think that’s why I did as well as I did.”

She only bowled on the high-school team through 10th grade because DJ was graduating and she perceived a lack of competitiveness in the program. Instead, she bowled in various youth and adult tournaments, including the Storm Youth Championships. 

After spending half-days at her regular high school and half at technical school learning about the construction trades, she figured that would be her life’s path. 

“Originally, I was not going to go to school and just be a good bowler around St. Louis. But my dad wanted me to go to college,” she said. “He didn’t really want me in that labor position for that long. He wanted me to be a foreman or a superintendent, which is what I hope to be.”

Because she was so quiet and shy, Donnie served as her public relations person. But being away from home for a semester has started to change that. 

“Now that she’s in college, she is coming out of her shell a little bit,” Donnie said. “She’s one of those people who is all business on the lanes.”

“It’s a little hard for me to let people in,” said Dannielle. “I think once I have understood everybody and they’ve understood me, I’m not so much on the fence about having my guard up. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m such an introvert. I don’t know how to take people. I’m very quiet around them.”

Pretty much an unknown to collegiate bowling before this season with no clue how good she is or can be, Henderson competed in all three fall tournaments in which Jacksonville State was entered.

“You could tell she was the talk when we’d go to a new pair,” Bryan O’Keefe said. “People would go, ‘Holy cow. What was that? And where does she come from?’”

She was in the regular rotation for the first two events in Orlando and Kenosha, Wisconsin. But left hip issues limited her dramatically in the third event in suburban Washington, D.C. Thanks to six transfers from McKendree, another from Nebraska, plus another freshman, there’s enough depth to overcome such challenges. 

“She has been bowling more than she’s used to,” Bryan said. “In her physical game, there are a few things we need to work on that will help with the injury bug.”

O’Keefe said Henderson performed like a typical freshman in her first two tournaments. 

“She had some incredible moments and some not-so-incredible moments,” he said. “But she has the attitude of just going to work and getting better at it. It’s good; she’s not satisfied with where she is. She wants to get better. That’s exciting for us.”

Henderson did make some key shots to help her team beat Vanderbilt, Stephen F. Austin, and Nebraska in early head-to-head Sunday matches. When she has, O’Keefe said she has even displayed an occasional fist pump or soft yell to celebrate, making her coaches smile at doing something outside her comfort zone. 

“It’s been good. The team spirit has been swell!” Henderson said. “I really enjoy bowling with my teammates and having fun and not just having to be a teammate and bowl. 

“Shannon and Bryan do a good job of having us do something we love and not just bowl, but have fun with our teammates and have conversations about anything. We can have fun about silly things and have fun with each other and that’s it.”

Two of Henderson’s current teammates — graduate students Rebecca Hagerman and Crystal Elliott — already are impressed with what they’ve seen from the freshman. 

“She’s amazing. She’s breathtaking,” said Hagerman, a Loves Park, Illinois, resident who transferred from McKendree. “I tell her all the time, ‘You throw it so good.’ She’s very calm, which I think is very important in bowling in general. She’s the most stoic person and I love watching her bowl.”

An admitted loner, Henderson hangs out with family when back in St. Louis and her teammates around Jacksonville. Being a teammate is something new for her, but something her peers say she has accepted. 

“She’s a great teammate,” Hagerman said. “She’s super supportive when she’s not bowling. She can wrap her mind around concepts that a 23-year-old can’t understand. There’s no two-handed woman who throws it like Dannielle.”

“She’s capable of a lot, honestly,” said Elliott, a Palm Bay, Florida, resident who bowled the last three years at Nebraska. “But she has no idea how talented she is. She honestly just throws the ball and enjoys the game.

“One of the things I like about her is she wants to be competitive and I think college bowling will bring out more of the competitiveness in her. But I love that she is doing it because she loves the game and wants to be better.”

Elliott said she’s talked to Henderson about her potential beyond collegiate bowling, including Junior Team USA and eventually the pros. 

“Definitely at first, she would stand in the back and wouldn’t really talk much,” Elliott said. “But Becca and I definitely are trying to get her out of her shell when we travel. Honestly, we can’t get her to stop talking because she has so much fun.” 

Not to put any added pressure on the 18-year-old, but the O’Keefes truly believe Henderson has the capability to revolutionize women’s bowling much like Jason Belmonte did with the men. The only other two-handed woman college bowler they could think of was Arkansas State University’s Maggie Thoma, a member of Junior Team USA in 2023. 

“She has all the makings from a physical standpoint, athleticism, her demeanor, and all the natural power she can create,” Bryan said. “It’s going to be all up to her. It’s one of the things you can’t measure — someone’s want or desire. It comes down to working together with Shannon and I collegiately and her internal desire to want to be that.”

“There’s an internal desire to be great and we’re just glad to be part of the process at this point,” Shannon said. “We plan to pour ourselves into her and watch what she does the next four years. It could be a lot of fun.”

Since Shannon O’Keefe hasn’t had much experience coaching two-handers, she will learn from Henderson’s journey.

As part of refining her game, the O’Keefes are having Henderson make the adjustments to improve her spare shooting to take advantage of her high rev rate. She has even been known to go on her own to a different center than the tournament host to work on her game. 

And that suits Dannielle’s humble personality just fine. She’s quite happy to be in the hands of the O’Keefes. 

“It was God’s will to go there because I didn’t get many Division I offers from schools,” she said. “There were no big names in there like McKendree and the O’Keefes. I want to take the opportunity as I don’t take it lightly. I really like them a lot because I didn’t have a coach or somebody to sit back and watch me bowl and know what they were doing.”

“She’s in great hands,” Sherman said. 

“Hopefully, I will learn from it and have fun,” she said. “I don’t want to beat myself up too bad. We’ll see.”

As Team USA coach, Bryan O’Keefe has been able to track the rev rates of men and women and said Henderson is at 525 RPM, which puts her on a par with some PBA members. 

“She throws the ball hard, with a lot of RPMs, but she is still in control,” he said. “She doesn’t look all out of whack. It looks efficient with not a lot of strain. It just looks natural like when you see Belmo or anyone else like that bowl. It’s effortless.

“I hope it’s not improper to say, but she bowls like a guy. She’s much more like a guy bowling than a female, not only with her rev rate but her ability to throw it hard — 20 miles per hour. When her ball hits the pins, it doesn’t look the same. It looks different. It’s like EJ Tackett’s ball hitting the pins. If we can just haul it in and match it up hopefully the sky’s the limit for her.”

Sherman’s awe of Henderson’s ability is apparent.

“It’s possible this is a girl who throws it harder than any other girl ever has thrown the ball,” Sherman said. “If you combine ball speed and rev rate, I’ve never seen any girl — one-handed or two-handed — throw it [with more power]. If she figures it out, she’ll have no problem competing on the men’s tour.”