There was a split second after Ryan Veasey bowled a perfect game, before it had sunk in, where he thought to himself “did that actually happen?”.
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For Veasey, achieving a perfect score of 300 in a tenpin bowling game had been 17 years in the making.
“I couldn’t believe it,” the Salamander Bay man said. “I wasn’t aiming for it at all. Everyone said you bowl a 300 when you least expect it and it was that night.”
Veasey, 22, has been bowling since he was 5 years old.
Moving to the Bay as child, Veasey played soccer and football to make friends before trying his hand at tenpin bowling. It was a sport he fell in love with and stuck with.
Veasey is currently a member in three of Salamander SuperStrike’s leagues. He plays about 30 games a week altogether.
It was in the Monday night singles league that Veasey bowled a perfect game. About 13 bowlers, men and women, are in the Monday league.
Bowlers are paired up each Monday and play a game against each other. The bowler with the highest points wins the round.
It was just another Monday on October 9 when Veasey fulfilled his almost life-long goal of bowling a perfect game.
Related: Bowler's 300 a rare feat
“I had a few misses and open frames in practice,” Veasey said of the night. “We got into the game and just everything was going right for me.
“I got four [strikes] in a row then it felt like it jumped to eight. I didn’t let it get to me. The guy I was competing against, he said to me: “don’t look at the score, just keep going”.”
Veasey said from the 10th frame onwards there was silence inside the bowling alley. When he produced a strike on the last frame, the alley erupted with applause and cheers.
Heath George, centre manager of the Salamander Bay tenpin bowling alley, said Veasey is only the fourth person to bowl a 300 in the past 19 years. The alley opened in 1998.
“To bowl a 300 you must bowl 12 consecutive strikes,” George said. “For recreational bowlers they are happy to get one strike in a game. Most average bowlers do well to score three strikes in a row.
“Those that are good enough to bowl a lot of strikes in one game succumb to the pressure after seven, eight or nine strikes in row and if they make it to 10 or 11 they realise everyone’s watching and that this chance might not come around again soon so mentally it gets tough.”
A 300 is only recognised during tournament play and not in practice, George added.
Veasey’s 300 came 12 months after David Jennings, a staff member of Salamander SuperStrike bowled a perfect game. It was also in the Monday night league.
For the feat, both men earned themselves a special tenpin trophy and a plaque with their name placed on the lane they bowled the 300 on.
Salamander SuperStrike 300 Records
Lane One
March 2016: Robert Charles – 300
Lane Three
July 2016: Robert Charles – 300
December 2016: David Jennings
Lane Six
November 2014: Robert Charles – 300
Lane Seven
July 2015: Robert Charles – 300
October 2016: Robert Charles – 300
October 2017: Ryan Veasey – 300
Lane Eight
September 2015: Robert Charles – 300
Lane Ten
October 1999: Shaun Cotter – 300