WASHINGTON (January 21, 2026) - Janae Pugh (Chicago) commands a room long before she throws a ball and that presence begins with the people stitched into her story.
 
The father whose love and memory she carries over her heart in ink. The family of bowlers who raised her in the glow of alley lights and the familiar clatter of balls striking one another. The teammates who became sisters. When the Howard University senior bowler gathers her team and says, "Let's go, y'all," she is not just leading. She is honoring the people who shaped her and stepping into a purpose far bigger than the sport itself.
 
That same steadiness fuels Pugh's dream beyond Howard to earn her doctorate, open her own hospital and one day become a CEO who leads with the compassion, clarity and conviction she brings to every frame. On the lanes or in a boardroom, Pugh moves like someone preparing for a future where her voice carries weight, her presence builds trust and her purpose changes lives.
 
"I do not really want to have like 18 bosses over me," Pugh shared with a laugh. "I want to be one of the bosses and go from there. Most of my family on my dad's side is in healthcare. I have always told myself I want to run my own hospital, not just something small, but something that would live on."
 
It is why her intensity on and off the lanes comes with urgency.
 
While the affable 5-foot-4 health science major may be Howard's team captain now, Pugh is preparing for something even larger. She aspires to be the kind of leader who does not just direct people but inspires them. That is the part people miss when they hear her talk about bowling.
 
Yes, she loves the sport. Yes, she has spent years sharpening her IQ, learning to control the controllables and let the rest go.
 
But for Pugh, the lanes are a training ground for something bigger. They teach her how to understand people, manage emotions and keep a team connected through good and bad frames. Leadership here, in this small and often overlooked corner of Howard Athletics, is preparing her for the kind of guidance that will one day shape a hospital floor, a medical team and an entire community.
 
"I am excited to be a captain after being the co-captain last year," Pugh said. "I do not want to be the type of captain who nags or tells people what to do. We are all adults. I try to keep everything in line and make sure everything gets done."
 
While the outside world may only see strikes, spares, splits and scores, Pugh has learned that every frame is a choice. A chance to reset. An opportunity to respond. A chance to show who you are when things do not go your way. For example, her calmness after a tough split or her encouragement during a close game reveal her resilience and leadership. That mindset, the ability to breathe, adjust, encourage and refocus, anchors her as a captain, a student, a future CEO and a young woman stepping fully into her calling.
 
For all the ways Pugh carries herself with purpose, one mission has defined her senior year more than any other: increasing the awareness of Howard bowling. For years, the reaction she heard each time she told someone she was a student-athlete was not celebration. It was confusion. "Oh, I did not even know we had a bowling team." That stuck with her. It is the sentence she is trying to erase from Howard's vocabulary.
 
"My main thing as captain is getting the word out and making sure we have the support we deserve," Pugh said. "We are amazing. Of course, we have support from family and friends, but I want people around campus to know we have a bowling team. I can tell the difference from when I was a freshman."
 
For Pugh, visibility became a mission and slowly she watched the shift take hold.
 
As a freshman, the team felt invisible. Now, professors who once had no idea the program existed ask her about tournaments, department chairs recognize them in hallways and students across campus follow their results and proudly say, "Oh yeah, I know somebody on the bowling team." It might sound small, but to a student-athlete who has poured years of dedication, sweat and miles into a sport most people associate with Friday night fun or Monday night leagues, that recognition is everything.
 
Staff members who never paid attention to bowling are now cheering the team on. A program that once operated in the shadows is now part of a growing circle of supporters who see them, value them and want to understand their journey.
 
That evolution was not accidental. It happened because Pugh decided that being captain meant more than showing up. It meant speaking up, representing her teammates everywhere she went and ensuring Howard Bowling had a presence beyond the lanes.
 
As the program grows in recognition, so does the story behind the captain who helped open that door. It is a story rooted in family, sharpened by experience, deepened by grief, driven by ambition and carried with purpose far beyond Howard's campus.
 
This is where Pugh's complete journey unfolds.
 
From the Windy City to The Mecca
 
Pugh did not grow up dreaming in blue and white, wearing Howard gear in her bedroom and calling it her "dream school." Her path from Chicago's South Side to The Mecca was not scripted like that.
 
"Honestly, Howard was not even on my radar at first," she admitted. "I always knew I was going to college—that was not the question. But I was looking more at places like Tennessee and Atlanta. I just wanted somewhere that felt familiar."
 
Then, she saw that Howard's application was open.
 
"I was like, let me just apply to see if I can get accepted into the school everybody raves about," she said. "When I got that acceptance, I was like, 'Whoa… okay.'"
 
She did not immediately leap. She sat with it, let it breathe. Then, she found out Howard had a bowling team and that changed everything.
 
Bowling runs through her family like a shared language. Her mother, father, grandmother, uncle and sister—they all bowl. It is not just what they do; it is where they gather, where memories are made and kept.
 
Her dad's reaction was instant: Oh, wait a minute. This might be something.
 
Still, she went through the process. She visited other campuses. People told her, "You will know when a place feels like home."
 
She kept waiting for that feeling.
 
It never came—until she stepped foot on Howard's campus. There, the lure and historic mosaic of The Mecca wrapped around her, a gravitational pull created by the footsteps of Kamala Harris, Chadwick Boseman, Taraji P. Henson, Thurgood Marshall and so many others who built legacies here. Standing where they once stood made her feel part of something bigger than her own dreams.
 
"When I finally visited Howard, it was like, 'Whoa. This feels amazing," she said. "It felt like an extension of my high school, which was basically the HBCU of the charter schools. I knew an HBCU was the way to go. Howard was where everything aligned: I could bowl; be around people who look like me and get an education with a name that carries weight."
 
Grief, Airports and the Team That Would Not Let Her Carry It Alone
 
Last season, during a tournament in Norfolk, Va., her world split in two. On one side were the lanes, the competition and the teammates who depended on her. On the other hand, there was her father, James, Jr., whose health was painfully declining.
 
"Something happened with my dad and they put him on hospice watch," she said quietly. "We were at a tournament and I had to leave."
 
For someone who prides herself on showing up and giving everything to her team, walking away—catching that flight out of Norfolk Airport—was agonizing.
 
But her coaches and teammates would not let her carry that decision alone.
 
"They kept telling me, 'There is no problem. We will take you to the airport. You need to be home," she said. "They never made me feel bad about leaving. They just wanted me to be where I needed to be."
 
In that moment, bowling fell into its proper place. The Bison did not need her scores. They needed her to be a daughter. It was one of the hardest lessons she is learned: you cannot be in two places at once. Sometimes, love is choosing where you are needed most.
 
Her father passed not long after. Now, nearly a year later, his absence is still sharp, but so is his presence. They used to buy fitted hats together, a small ritual she continues as her collection grows. She carries him with her in ink as well. Over her heart reads "Daddy's Little Girl," a tattoo most people never see, hidden beneath jerseys and hoodies, but one that represents the truest scoreboard she knows.
 
"Hats are a big part of me," Pugh said. "If you know me, I love a hat. That is something my dad and I did. There is no such thing as too much money when it comes to a hat, especially if it is a nice one, I have not seen before. I want it. I might not wear it as much, but I want it."
 
Pugh has 14 tattoos in total. "222" sits on her right thigh in honor of her great-grandmother's birthday and down the left side of her leg runs Psalm 46:5: "God is within her, she will not fall." She has her mom's name, Erica, on her back. Each tattoo is a meaningful reminder of her roots, her faith and the people who lift her like her sister, Alexis, her grandmother, Tracey Walton, and uncle, Eric Walton.
 
They keep her grounded and remind her she is never walking alone.
 
Scholar, Future Hospital CEO and Bridge-Builder
 
Pugh has been bowling since she was four, raised in a family where the sport was not a question. It was a way of life. By early high school, the joy faded and she stepped away, choosing basketball instead. But during the COVID pandemic, bowling nudged her back to the lanes. When she returned, she brought a fresh perspective: more intentional; hungrier and determined. That renewed love is what helped her career take off.
 
"Out of nowhere, I was like, let me see if that bowling thing is still in me," she said. "This time, it was different. I was not being told to bowl. I chose it. Once I came back, I was like, 'Oh, I like this. I like this a lot.' It was fun again. And that is when it really took off."
 
That vision sharpened after her father's passing and has been nurtured through her involvement with the Marriott-Sorenson Center for Hospitality Leadership where she is a scholar surrounded mainly by business, finance and sales majors.
 
Pugh recently attended the National Coalition of Black Meeting Professionals' 42^nd annual conference in Portland. This experience invigorated her as she witnessed Black executives and CEOs leading with excellence up close. These were people who looked like her, came from neighborhoods like hers and now lead companies and organizations that shape lives.

Pugh was showered with love and gratitude from event organizers and attendees and the Marriott-Sorenson Center has given her opportunities to step into rooms she once dreamed about and foster intentional growth.
 
Pugh shared on her LinkedIn page that, "This conference was not just an event, it was an impactful experience that reminded me why representation, collaboration and leadership in the meetings and hospitality industry matter so deeply. I walked away feeling more informed, more empowered and more committed to contributing to the future of this industry. … This is more than a network; this is forever family. I am excited to carry these lessons forward and continue pouring into spaces that elevate creativity, innovation and community."
 
Through these experiences, she is learning how hospitals work from the outside in and how leadership works from the inside out. She is collecting tools that will eventually help her build the kind of institution her family and families like hers deserve.
 
"That is inspiring," she said. "Seeing people who did not grow up with a silver spoon, but still made it, still take care of their families, still stay grounded, that shows me it is possible."
 
Away from the lanes and the classroom, Pugh loves listening to hip-hop music, reading and writing poetry. She just finished binge-watching "Reasonable Doubt" on Hulu and currently streaming "A Different World." The trip to Portland also ignited her passion for traveling.

Though, she is only 21, she calls herself an "old soul," shaped by the time she spent around her family growing up.
 
"I love to travel," Pugh said. "It is one of my biggest things because I feel like I kind of wasted my time on this Earth if I did not get to see what was in it."
 
The Family on the Lanes
 
For all the rooms she is stepping into and all the futures she is preparing to build, the most accurate reflection of her purpose is still found in the family she returns to on the lanes.
Ask Pugh what she will miss most when the last frame of her senior year is thrown and her answer is immediate.
 
"My teammates and coaches," she said. "We are basically together all the time—from practices four or five days a week to tournaments every weekend. They are my family."
 
She jokes with the newcomers that they are going to get tired of her, but the truth runs deeper: these are the people who will be in her wedding one day; the ones she will cheer for in jobs, graduations and life's following chapters.
 
They are not just names on a roster. They are forever people.
 
In a few months, another Howard team will take the lanes. New captains will emerge. New freshmen will walk into an alley where people are already saying, "Oh yeah, I know our bowling team," instead of, "We have bowling?"
 
That is part of Pugh's legacy.
 
She will not leave with a statue or a banner hanging from the rafters. What she will leave is harder to quantify but easier to feel: a higher standard; a louder presence; a program that knows it is special and belongs.
 
From a little girl in the bowling alleys of Chicago to a captain at Howard to a future hospital CEO, Pugh's story is about more than strikes and spares.
 
It is about choosing your path when no one hands you a map. It is about carrying your people with you, even when they are gone. It is about helping a hidden program become a visible family.
 
In the end, it is about a simple truth Pugh lives every day on the lanes: you cannot change the frame behind you, but you can change everything about the one right in front of you.
   
For more information, visit the official Howard Athletics website www.hubison.com.