If your name is on the wall above the pins at Cariboo Bowling Lanes, you know you’ve done something right.
Local bowler Larry Andrews can lay claim to the feat after he pitched a 405 game during his Thursday Night Bowling League session on Oct. 2.
“It was a spare, a strike, a spare and then all the rest strikes,” Andrews told the Tribune. “Nine strikes in a row and everything was just clicking.”
Approaching the 10th and final frame Andrews kept calm, knowing three back-to-back strikes could put him in the 400-plus bracket.
“I wasn’t really nervous because I knew I was doing well, and when I do that I don’t look at my score,” he said. “If I’d looked I would have gotten nervous and I would have figured out, hey, I could make a 400 here. I thought I was maybe going to hit high 300s and I was OK with that until the last frame and I just struck out.”
Andrews has been bowling since he was seven years old and was a member of a youth league as a child while living in Vancouver. When he was 10 he started playing 10-pin bowling and continued with that variation of the game until a business opportunity brought him to Williams Lake.
“I miss 10 pin,” he said. “This [five pin] was kind of a baby game compared to 10 pin but I’ve learned to just love it. It’s competitive. It’s awesome socially and I play with a wonderful group of people both Monday night and Thursday night. All the people and the people who run the place here are just great people.”
He encouraged anyone who wants to learn to play the game to visit the local bowling alley for some practice and offered a bit of advice.
“Anyone who wants to learn the game should just learn to reach for the head pin,” he said. “That’s important. Keep [the ball] in the middle where you’re going to get strikes and just reach for that headpin.”
