Bowler rolls 2nd perfect game of the year

Cairns bowled 300 in September  and on Monday

A rare feat has been accomplished twice this year by local bowler Travis Cairns.

In mid-September he bowled a perfect 300 game while playing for the Fisherman’s Restaurant team.

On Monday, Cairns did it again at the Tsunami Lanes Bowling Center in Crescent City, this time as a member of another team,  the Beer Goblins, and rolled a perfect game again.

A perfect game is a feat many bowlers strive to achieve once in their lives, let alone twice in a three-month span.

“It felt pretty natural and fluid  this time,” Cairns said.

As the game progressed he started to become more and more comfortable as the pins kept getting knocked down.

The big difference from the last time he rolled a perfect game was that he took a big, deep breath each time before he bowled.

“It relaxes me when the adrenaline gets pumping,” he said. “It really helped to calm me down.”

Only a week before Carins was almost perfect, finishing a game with a score of 288 and was hopeful he would have another strong game the next Monday.

Hank Northrip, the President of the Crescent City Bowling Association, said while Cairns’ accomplishment is not unheard of, it is “very rare” to have someone  accomplish this more than once in a year.

The last time he recalled an individual in Crescent City bowl  more than one perfect game in a single-year period was in the 1970s when Jake Moody did it three times in one year.

Northrip, who was a team member of Cairns when he bowled a perfect game in September, was an observer on Monday

“Everyone was rooting him on,” Northrip said.

As Cairns took his last shot to complete a perfect game, a decent-sized crowd of onlookers had gathered around him.

As soon as the ball struck all the pins Cairns recalled that “I put my hands up and everyone was cheering.”

Making it even more memorable was the fact that his mom is a member of his team and was there to see him bowl a perfect game.

And his father, Doug Cairns, bowled a perfect game at Tsunami Lanes four years ago.

Travis Cairns said that he would love to bowl another perfect game.

“We’ll see what happens,” he said.

 This has been a good year for local bowlers, Northrip said. On Tuesday night local bowler Merle Helstowski had a 289 in a league game and in the local bowling leagues there have been around 17 700 series this year, he said.

A key reason, Northrip believes, is improvements made to the bowling alley, including changing the oil pattern.

“It’s been great,” he said. “People have been bowling more consistently.”

Cairns hopes that more people  will try out bowling here and perhaps join a league. It’s a fun and easy sport to learn, he said.

“I’d like to see more people give it a shot,” Cairns said.