Bowling, as Leah Ecaruan can attest, will taunt you with the elusiveness of perfection.
Roll 12 balls and knock down all the pins and you have a score of 300, which somebody once decided is a perfect game.
What other sport would be so cruel? In golf, par isn’t par, it’s excellent. In team sports, perfection is dependent upon your teammates. Even in baseball, which has the temerity to declare that 27 straight outs is a perfect game, a pitcher’s mistakes can be covered up by good fielders.
But bowling? Bowling will tantalize you with the notion that perfection is attainable. All you need to do is roll 12, um, er, perfect balls.
“It’s all about muscle memory,” said PBA Hall of Famer Dave Husted, owner and operator of Hazel Dell Lanes. “Rhythm and timing. But there is a small amount of luck involved.”
Which brings us to Ecaruan. The Mountain View High School senior, who carries an average of 157 and had a previous high of 235, spent Wednesday’s match against Heritage as a favored daughter of the bowling gods.
She rolled five straight strikes to open the second game of the match. She left a 7-pin and an open frame in the sixth. She closed with six more strikes.
In bowling math, that adds up to a score of 267, with strikes counting for 10 points plus the pinfall from the next two rolls. Ecaruan faced 120 pins, and she knocked down 119 of them.
“At the beginning of the game, I thought it was just going to be a normal game,” she said. “It was kind of weird. It was kind of surreal to me. I think on my last frame, everyone was watching and cheering.”
As coach Tim Buswell said, “It was a great thing to watch. It was electrifying. It was great for the girls.”
And, as teammate Abby Henry said, “She was calm throughout the whole thing. I think we were more nervous than she was.”
Ecaruan doesn’t look like somebody who should be feared by bowling pins throughout the land. Describing her height as “5-footish,” she throws a long, slow, sweeping hook that dances next to the gutter before turning toward the pocket of the pins.
“I think I’m a technical bowler, focusing on every little detail,” she said. “It’s not really about how hard you throw. It’s not about power, per se.”
But for one magical game, Ecaruan had the power of lightning in a bottle.
“My friends were all giving me high-fives and asking if it was real,” she said. “I don’t like bragging about it; it could have happened to anyone.”
Instead, it happened to an average high school bowler who plans to attend either the University of Portland or Pacific University to major in psychology. A bowler who took up the sport as a freshman because some friends were doing it. A bowler who flirted with perfection — or perhaps was taunted by it.
“I’m excited for the girl who did that,” said Husted, who said he has bowled “about 47 or 48” perfect games in competition. “Next time it will get easier and easier.”
If only perfection were so attainable.
Greg Jayne is Sports editor of The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4531, or by e-mail at greg.jayne@columbian.com. Read his blog at http://www.columbian.com/weblogs/GregJayne
