The third king-pin to throw a perfect game in the history of the St. Albert Bowling Centre was delivered by Richard Spence.
“It’s a nice accomplishment,” said Spence of his March 29 feat in the Tuesday match play league. “I’ve always wanted to do it someday but it wasn’t a specific goal of mine.”
Donna Heidinger in 1994 and Allan Taylor in 2008 also recorded 12 strikes and 450 scores on the St. Albert lanes.
“I’ve had quite a string of strikes before, like six or eight in a row, but never anything like this,” said Spence, who shattered his career high score of 385 in the second of four games bowled that night. “It really wasn’t until the 10th frame that it sort of set in that this could happen, but to be quite honest I was just trying to avoid thinking about it.”
As the strikes kept multiplying, so did the attention surrounding Spence.
“After I got five or six or something like that, one of my teammates [Gord Graves] actually headed up to the front desk and alerted the employees. Apparently, in order for it to be a legitimate type of thing, you have to have somebody official from the centre watching. He made a point not to tell me about it either. He just sort of did it on the sly so nobody knew what was going on,” said the Edmonton resident.
That quickly changed while Spence racked up the strikes.
“There was maybe a dozen people or so watching but they were actually pretty good about it. They tried to keep it pretty low keyed. They were cheering obviously after each one but they didn’t draw a big crowd.”
On the verge of something special after the 11th strike, Spence was calm and focused.
“I knew I had a shot at a perfect game, and people were interested in what I was doing, but I tried to block it all out. I went up there and acted like I was just going for one, and not worrying that I got 11 other ones,” he said.
“When I threw the last one I was a little nervous that I wasn’t going to quite get that far left two pin down but as soon as I saw them all fall down I turned around and threw my hands up. [Spectators] watching were cheering pretty loudly, which brought other people over and most of the rest of the league and they started congratulating me with high fives and handshakes and hugs.”
The previous bowling highlight for Spence was competing for a national classified men’s team in 2006, when he met his fiancĂ©e, Zsuzsanna Schuchard, at the local bowling centre.
“The team was essentially made up of five bowlers, one from each average classification. We went to Calgary and won the provincial championship, and then went on to the national championship and placed third in the country,” said the producer for Christie Communications.
Spence, 26, has been a St. Albert regular for seven years and has bowled for 20 years.
“It was really my grandparents who sort of almost forced it on us as young kids. Once a week our parents would take us out bowling and the grandparents would meet us there,” said the M. E. Lazerte High School graduate. “It was a lot of fun. It was something we enjoyed going to and doing.”
Spence learned how to knock pins down at the old Rosslyn Bowl and spent most of his Youth Bowling Council career at the Bronx Bowl.
“I started at the lowest level of the YBC system and have gone up from there,” he said. “I was definitely not one of the best bowlers around but I could hold my own. I had some success and I just sort of continued that on. It’s only been the last five or six years that I’ve been bowling in the adult leagues.”
