Although it would have distracted almost anyone else, Greg Karas seemed oblivious to the commotion.

    As he began the first game of league play a few nights ago at Centerville Lanes, he paid no attention to the newspaper photographer who edged her way out onto the adjoining lane, crouched down and began to shoot dozens of pictures of him as he competed.

    Karas opened with a strike, then threw another.  In the third frame, he toppled the 7-pin, a tricky pick-up for a left hander, for his spare.  After that came strike...  strike...  strike...  strike.  Four in a row.

    As word spread about the show Karas was putting on down on lanes 19 and 20, one bowler after another slipped over to watch and urge him on.  Some offered a pat on the back, others gretted him by tapping one of their fists to his left fist or high-fiving his upraised left hand.

    Karas' right arm, with its hand bent back toward the elbow and fingers curled inward, stayed close to his body like a wounded wing.

    The 20-year old bowler has cerebral palsey, a condition in which muscle control is impaired or lost by injury to cells in the motor area of the brain.  For Karas that has meant a difficulty in walking.  When he bowls, he wobbles to the line with a sid-to-side sway, knees together, feet splayed outward, heels brushing off each other.

    Rather than slide to the line as other bowlers do, he does something of a cross-over step and literally hops sideways, with his right arm suddenly jutting outward, to propel the ball from his left hand.  Ands as the all hooks pefectly towards the pins, he's left teetering for his balance like a man who just landed on a tightrope.  Sometimes he even falls, but the show he puts on at the top of the lane is nothing but a warm-up act for what goes on down by the pins.

    The other night he rolled a 241, then a 210 and finally 161 for a 612 series.

    "The first time I saw him, I had to brush back tears and yet was awestruck by his tremendous skills," said John Badger, who lived in Waynesville before moving to Florida and bowled in one of the leagues with Karas.  "Greg truly is incredible."

    Regulars around Centerville Lanes have seen Karas bowl several 300 games and 700 series in practice, though the closest hes come in sanctioned play is a 257 and a 699.  Earlier this year, he finished tied for 14th in the ABC City Singles Tournament, a pin handicap event open to Dayton bowlers, and it wasn't long ago that he carried a 187 average.

    "It's just when I'm out there on the lane, I forget about all this,"  Karas said, nodding down toward his right hand and thin lower legs.  "I forget about my condition.  All I see are the pins and all I want to do is win."

    Mariruth Winters, who at 80 has bowled for more four decades, taught young bowlers and for years ran the youth league at Centerville Lanes, is the one who started Karas bowling during the summer after his eighth-grade year.  "Forget that he just has one good hand," she said.  "He's grabbed hold of this game like no one I've ever seen."

    Karas first had come to the Centerville bowling house on an end-of-the-school year field trip.  He talked about it so much when he got home that his maternal gandmother - Frances Kalkas, who was raising him at the time - brought him back two weeks later.

    Karas said he was adopted at infancy and spent his early years in Oakwood.  His mother, Angela Karas, died, he said from a bood disorder when she was just 40.  "It was the week of my eighth birthday."  he said quietly.  "After that my dad wasn't around a lot and my grandmother took me in.  My mother had made the foundation for me then my grandmother built me from there.  She really believed in me and tried to cheer me on whenever I tried something.  I remember her trying to get the whole crowd clapping for me when I started bowling.  She wanted me to get the same things the other kids got.

    That was easier said then done.

    "My sister first started noticing there was a problem when Gregory wa about 6 months old, "said Cathy Slaughter, Angela's sister.  "He started to crawl, but wasn't using his two hands.  At first the doctors were baffled.  Finally they came up with the CP diagnosis."

    Karas said it was his grandmother who taught him how to walk.  She's also the one who convinced him to stick with bowling.  "In the beginning I was terrible,"  Karas said.  "My high game that whole first summer was a 124.  But Mariruth taught me the basics and got me to like the game."

    By the time he was a sophmore, he was playing for Centerville Lanes' traveling high school team.  The first season he was a sub and the following two years he bowled for both the A and the B teams.

    Althought he has had a few other coaches who have fine-tuned his game, he singes out Winters:  "If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be here.  I don't know where I'd be...  And I don't want to know."

    The thought quieted him and he shook his head rather than expound.

    "Bowling was been the one sport he could excel at and it really helped his self-esteem." said Slaughter who with her husband Scott, took Karas into their Springboro home after his grandmother died three years ago.

    "The one thing I notice about Greg is that he really never speaks about his disorder," she said.  "He never says 'I can't do this because I'm disabled.'  As far as I'm concerned , he doesn't think  he is disabled.  Other people with a handicap like this might stay inside and think that they  can't  do things.   Not  him.  And because of that,  we look at him  the same way.  We only see what he's accomplished, not that he can't do this or that."

    Since graduating from Springboro High in 1998,  Karas has been studying computers at RETS Tech Center in Centerville.  He drives  his own car and now has his own apartment.  But the place that your most likely to find him is at Centerville Lanes, where he bowls in as many as four leagues during the winter, two in the summer, subs for other bowlers on many other nights and helps run the Thunder Alley midnight bowling on the weekends.

    "The guys at Centerville Lanes- Ron Rentz(the owner), and Russ Maiden(the manager), really look out for him," Winters said.  "They've" beem wonderful."

    Karas' good pal and his partner in most leagues is Matt Steffano, a 21 year-old Alter High grad:  "Greg's definitely had to adjust his body so he could bowl with his handicap.  And the thing is, his shot is so smooth.  That's why he's able to hook it like he can."

    Tod Heckman, one of the top bowlers at Centerville, has tutored Karas:  "When I'm around him now I don't consider him handicapped.  How could you?  He's taken a disability and worked it into a positive.  It may take him awhile, buthe always does it."

    That's the traight Liz Steele, Steffano's girlfriend, likes best about Karas:  "I've seen him land on his rear several times while he was bowling.  Everytime he gets right back up and has that same positive attitude."

    Over the years he's needed it.  Winters said when Karas first came around he wasn't always accepted by the kids.  "Finally, he just won them over."

    Karas exhauled another drag from his Marlboro Ultra Light and with it came dismissal of those times past:  "Sometimes when people first see me, they'll ask 'What's wrong with you?'  I just shrug, but if they keep staring, I might tell them, 'Look, I live with a condition I can't help it.  I'm no different than you.'

    "This may sound corny, but one thing I've always hung onto was something my dad told me once.  It went something like, 'Heros are remembered, but legends will never die.'  The way I interperet that is, to make an impression, you've got to take something to another level than everybody else does.  For me tha'ts just trying to be the best I can  -- no excuses."

    And that's why he bowls 20 or so games a week, always chasing the 300 game the 700 series and the dream that one day he could go  pro.  Heckman said sometimes he presses to hard for those goals, but, when  no one else was around , Karas finally talked about the sometims obsessive way he embraces bowling.

"I hope one day that might find a cure for my CP," he said quietly.  "But if they don't,  I probably don't have anymore than 20-25 years left to bowl.  After that I might not be physically able.  And that kind of scares me because bowling has given me the greatest times of my life.

    "Sometimes I wonder where I'd be without out.  Tod tells me if it wasn't for my condition I could be one of the best bowlers in this house.  He might be right.  I might have been the one guy they'd all be talking about."

    But if you watched the other night, you saw he already is the talk of the house.  And he probably always will be.  Just like the phraze stated earlier,  "Legends never die."