Waldner pins perfection on bowling resume
The perfect game.
In any sport, it’s a rare thing indeed.
For anybody who bowls 10-pin as regularly as Jessica Waldner does, it’s the pinnacle of achievement – a triumph of muscle memory, concentration and the refusal to cave into pressure with everybody watching that flirtation with perfection.
On Jan. 10 at Strike Zone Bowling Centre, the city’s 10-pin bowling alley, Waldner finally captured that elusive prize, knocking every pin down through 10 frames and it happened during a Wednesday morning coffee league game.
“I got the first six or seven strikes, no big deal, I wasn’t too nervous,” the 36-year-old Waldner said. “After that seventh strike I became a bit nervous but I just kept throwing and was on a roll. The last frame for the last strike – well at that point everyone was watching and I literally was shaking, my whole body.
“I’d say there were probably 35 people watching, everything was silent. I didn’t take my time, I went up there and did it quick and it was over with. My perfect game.
“I always dreamed of having a perfect game so when I got that 12th strike (on three balls in the 10th frame) I was pretty excited.”
Waldner was given a $300 prize by Strike Zone owner Peter Minck to help celebrate the occasion. None of the 12 strikes had any lingering pins which wobbled hesitantly before they fell. There were no last-second doubters. She made solid contact with all of them.
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In her first game that morning, Waldner’s only misses came in the first and ninth frames, in which she left one pin standing and had to use a second ball to get the spare.
That was all that separated her from back-to-back perfection.
“My first game I threw 279 and the second game was 300, so it was back-to-back pretty good,” said Waldner.
Her previous best game score was 287, recorded two years ago at Strike Zone.
Waldner inherited her love of bowling from her parents, Suzanne and Pierre Harvey, who moved their family from Montreal when Jessica was still a young teen. They got her started playing in the youth league when she was 13. By 16, she was bowling with the adults.
Jessica bowls on the same team with her dad on Wednesdays and her mom works at Strike Zone and they both witnessed her prefect game.
Two male bowlers – Stephen Meakin and Alan Martin – have bowled perfect games at Strike Zone. Martin hit the first of his two 300-games in September 2012 and Meakin followed in November 2016 with back-to-back perfect games – 24 consecutive strikes – during Wednesday night league play.