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ADEL, Iowa — Closing a circle on her Iowa presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton stopped in at a bowling alley here on Wednesday owned by Bryce Smith, a 23-year-old she met on her first visit to the state as a 2016 candidate.

“Bryce’s story was so touching,” Mrs. Clinton said as she stood in front of 12 bowling lanes in the packed Adel Family Fun Center, which was lined with wood paneling and local news clippings.

“He cared so much about what this business provided to Adel — it was a gathering place, it was a place for family fun, and he was describing his dream of someday owning that,” Mrs. Clinton continued. “That is the American dream.”

Mr. Smith was among five small-business owners whom Mrs. Clinton spoke to at a round table in Norwalk in April, part of her first swing in the state that will hold its caucuses on Monday. Mr. Smith lamented to Mrs. Clinton that he could not afford to pay off his college loans and pursue his dream of owning a bowling alley, and the visit turned him into something of a local celebrity. He is now running for the Iowa House in his hometown district.

“At the end of it, she said, ‘I would love to stop by your small business,’ and I said, ‘I would love that, too,’” Mr. Smith said introducing Mrs. Clinton on Wednesday. “Nothing motivates you more to clean a business than having a potential president stop by.”

Bowling alley visits have become something of a staple for presidential campaigns, and perhaps sensing the pitfalls of a gutter ball, Mrs. Clinton demurred from trying out the Adel lanes.

During the 2008 Democratic contest, Senator Barack Obama bowled a 37 at the Pleasant Valley Lanes in Altoona, Penn. The area’s working-class voters were not impressed. Shrugging off the low score, Mr. Obama declared, “My economic plan is better than my bowling.” To which a man yelled, “It has to be!”

Mrs. Clinton seized on her opponent’s gutter balls, challenging him to a bowl off. “A bowling night, right here in Pennsylvania. The winner takes all,” she said during their heated primary fight. The contest played out on the set of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” when Mrs. Clinton missed the pins entirely on her first try, knocking a single pin down on her second attempt.

The early period of Mrs. Clinton’s current campaign, when she held small round-table discussions with a handful of handpicked Iowans, drew criticism for seeming staged, but Mrs. Clinton, who focused on foreign policy in her four years at the State Department, says she got a lot out of them. She continues to refer to and draw on the stories she heard in the first few months of her candidacy.

“I went for education in college so I could teach, but I fell in love with bowling,” Mr. Smith explained to Mrs. Clinton in their first discussion. “So that’s my biggest thing, is the barrier of entry and financing.”

Mrs. Clinton lit up as she recalled the period in her campaign when she wanted to hear directly from voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. “We all know about the student loan debt, but I’ve never heard anyone so persuasively link it to the slowdown in business startups,” she said.

“You’ve given me an insight that nobody else has,” Mrs. Clinton said to Mr. Smith, “and I’m grateful to you.”