Even Port Coquitlam five-pin bowler Jeremy Chatt couldn't believe himself last Saturday and, on Wednesday, he was still beside himself.
The 16-year-old Chatt did something no youth bowler in B.C. has accomplished in more than five years and nobody at PoCo Bowl has achieved in 17: He bowled a perfect game. That's 12 straight strikes for a 450 score.
Perfect? More like UNBELIEVABLE!!!
In happened during just another of hundreds of league games the Grade 11 Terry Fox secondary school student has played since joining PoCo Bowl at age nine after moving with his family a wee bit east from Anmore.
"It just felt like a regular game at the beginning," Chatt explained to The Tri-City News. "Everything felt smoothly like it was a well-oiled machine, more or less. I didn't feel like anything special was going on."
Then the balls kept firing dead straight down lucky lane No. 7, the pins kept blasting apart and the tension kept mounting. Before he knew, about 30 persons - some who halted their personal action to watch - had gathered behind him to witness what turned out to be one fantastic feat.
"Around the ninth frame, after nine strikes in a row, I felt I can do this. Before that, I knew I could choke at anytime," Chatt said with a sheepish grin. "In the eighth frame, everybody started huddling around. I just didn't bother looking at anybody because I knew my adrenaline would get going and it would be too hard to stop.
"I got in my own little bubble and brought my heart-rate down."
Nine straight strikes then 10 then 11 then just one more
"The 12th ball, I thought that would be the worst one because I screwed everything up," conceded Chatt, who owns a 205 average and whose previous best was "six or seven" straight strikes. "I lobbed the ball out there a little bit too far and it skipped a couple times on the lane. It looked like it was going to hit the right two [pins] but it somehow hooked in and hit the head pin and they all went down.
"The last one was more of a fluke than anything."
Fluke? FLUKE?? No. It may not have felt like it when he let the last ball fly but it - like all his previous attempts - was perfect. Simply perfect.
PERFECT and UNBELIEVABLE!!!
"I came off and started high-fiving everybody and I was cheering and hooting and hollering," Chatt said, grinning again while recalling his celebratory antics. "It was an unreal feeling."
PoCo Bowl owner Brian Madaski was at his business place Saturday but left about 10 minutes before Chatt started firing strikes. His jaw dropped when he was later informed what the boy had done.
"Perfect games in five-pin bowling are extremely difficult," Madaski said. "There was quite a crowd here [to watch Chatt]. It was pretty exciting, all right."
Madaski and his staff paid tribute to Chatt by mounting a sign attached to the over-head lane No. 7 monitor: **Perfect Game** Jeremy Chatt 450.
Chatt said he's slowly receiving more and more accolades for his feat but added he isn't making a big deal of it publicly.
"To me, [bowling] is just a fun two or three hours a day," he said. "I've met good friends from it. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of being the centre of attention. If I can keep back [from it], I'd rather keep back. But whatever happens happens."
However, Chatt said he couldn't resist offering a jovial jab at a buddy a couple days later while pointing up at his congratulatory sign.
"One of my friends who's down here quite often I said to, 'Try to beat that score.'"
Good luck, pal.
