Family on a roll with 41 perfect games
OAK CREEK - It’s not uncommon for a father and son to have bowled 300 games and it’s probably been done hundreds of times by two or more siblings.
But a father, mother and both of their sons? You don’t see that come down the alley every day.
Meet the Ross family, Wisconsin’s first family of bowling. Jeff has rolled 32 perfect games and his younger brother, Brad, has had four. Their mother, Donna, has three 300 games to her credit and their late father, Paul, had two.
“I know of a lot of father-sons that have shot 300, or father, son and brother,” Jeff said, “but you don’t throw the mom in there very often.”
One family, 41 perfect games. And counting.
The run started with Paul, a pinsetter in his youth at a small bowling center in Daggett in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He became an accomplished bowler, notching two perfect games, one of them capping an 801 series. He and Donna married in 1969, back when she wasn’t much of a bowler.
“I had a three-step back-up ball that just drove him crazy,” she said. “He bowled twice a week when we got married and I said, ‘OK, that’s it.’ I got the girls in the apartment building together and we ended up getting five girls to bowl at Pinky’s on 27th and Oklahoma.”
It wasn’t long before Donna was giving her husband a run for his money. At her best, she averaged 208 and rolled a 793 series that included one of her three 300 games.
When Jeff and Brad came along, there was no doubt they were going to be bowlers.
“Bowling, it definitely was a family thing,” Jeff said. “Mom and Dad would bowl during the week or on weekends and we were here with other kids, running around like we owned the place. We basically grew up in a bowling alley.”
Jeff, 43, is the more accomplished bowler with nearly a dozen 800 series and a high of 853, but Brad, 38, is no slouch with his four 300 games and a high series of 798. Just a month ago, he got the first 11 strikes before finishing with an 8-count and a 298 game.
“I’ve got time to catch him,” Brad said.
Donna, 70, knows it’s going to be a little tougher to add to her total of three 300 games. She bowls only one night a week, Wednesday nights at Classic Lanes. Jeff and Brad bowl with her and also bowl in a fatherson league on Sunday mornings.
“I don’t think I’ll get another one,” said Donna, who still averages a more-than-respectable 183. “I bowl one night a week and that makes a difference. I still bowl the city and state tournaments with my friends, so you never know. But I’m not planning on it.”
Paul died in November 2009, but not before witnessing an emotional comeback by Jeff, who was working with a group of contract employees inside a coal dust silo at We Energies earlier that year when an explosion rained flames down on the crew.
Jeff was burned on 33% of his body but he was most worried about his hands, which needed skin grafts. Only his right thumb was spared. Call it a lucky break. “That’s my bowling thumb,” he said.
It took nearly nine months before he could throw a bowling ball again. On his first night back, he rolled a 300 game. On the 12th ball, the 10pin wobbled for what seemed an eternity before finally falling over in slow motion. Paul and Donna were there to see it.
“We were down on another pair and everybody was saying Jeff was throwing all these strikes and my heart was pounding,” Donna said. “I was pacing back and forth. He threw the last ball and everybody was like, ‘O-o-o-h.’ Then the 10-pin went down and everybody was screaming and crying.”
Jeff isn’t sure what number 300 game that was, but he’s had plenty since. In fact, he had No. 32 last Wednesday, just an hour after I interviewed the Rosses at Classic Lanes.
Jeff ’s son, Jacob, is 12. Brad’s son, Bryce, is 6. They bowl with their fathers on Sunday mornings. There’s a bit of a family tradition to uphold.
No pressure, boys.