May 18, 2011

What a string! Haverhill bowler ties world record with a 245

Bill Burt bburt@eagletribune.com The Eagle Tribune Wed May 18, 2011, 02:11 AM EDT

Chris Sargent got the guys on his candlepin bowling team together in a group just before the third and final string at Metro Bowl Lanes in Peabody on Friday night. He said everyone needed to pick it up a notch or two.

"Coach" Sargent, who shot a respectable 130 and 135 in his first two strings that night, heeded his own advice.

The 40-year-old Haverhill resident and Groveland police officer ended up having one of the greatest strings in candlepin bowling history.

Sargent rolled a 245, tying a world record set in 1984 by Ralph Semb, who also happens to be the current president of International Candlepin Bowling Association (ICBA).

Previous to that, Sargent's best-ever string was 214.

"We were losing this match by 51 pins," recalled Sargent, whose average is about 125. "The league ends (this week). We're in first place, but the second place team is close to us in overall points. Each person on the winning team gets about $1,200 and each person the second place team gets about $700. That's a big difference."

Sargent opened his string with an easy spare followed by a strike, before he sat down for a rest. Then he rolled two more strikes, before taking another breather.

"My teammates were going a little crazy, giving me high fives after that fifth strike in a row," said Sargent, who is married and a father of four children. "I was definitely in a little zone and feeling good."

Then it was two more strikes, both of which sent the pins down without any doubt, that the opposing team started to get excited.

"That was an awesome feeling, when the other team started going a little crazy, rooting me on," Sargent said.

Sargent stayed hot, getting a strike in his next frame before a spare — "It wasn't even close to a strike. I got seven pins," said Sargent — finally piqued his interest in his score.

"I usually don't like looking up at the scores, other than to check where we stand in the team competition," said Sargent. "But when I saw that I was at 197 and the fill (on the spare) after eight frames, I said, 'Man, I'm over 200 already.'"

Sargent wasn't finished wowing people. He scored a strike in the ninth frame, as several bowlers from nearby lanes came over to check out the excitement, including the owners.

The 10th frame appeared to be just like the ninth, as his ball was perfectly thrown just to the left of the head pin. But for some reason, one pin, shaking a bit, never fell. He got the spare, setting up his final ball in the extra frame.

He needed nine pins for the world record. He got eight to tie it.

When he finished everyone at Metro Bowl was cheering. "If that pin fell in the ninth (frame) for a strike I would have been guaranteed in the 250s," said Sargent. "But I can't complain."

Sargent's team went on to win six out of a possible eight points (two points for each game and two points for the overall) and beat the opposition by a whopping 158 pins.

But on this night, the team was secondary.

"It was incredible to watch. I got chills," said Sargent's teammate and friend, Dave Godwin of Methuen. "I've bowled six strikes in a row before. I can't explain how nervous you get after you get four or five in a row.

"But Chris is special," he said. "He has a way of staying so calm. He bowled the best string ever. That's incredible when you think about it."

Sargent is no stranger to the ICBA world record book. He owns the best three-string total (530) in a five-string match.

Twice he broke the three-string record, which is 514, but on both occasions — he scored 518 and 517 — they weren't recognized because the facility wasn't sanctioned and the other bowling alley's foul lights weren't activated.

Sargent is also part of the reigning 10-man team from USA East that won the world championships last October in Maine. Godwin, Gary Carrington (Plaistow, N.H.) and Chuck Desrochers (Methuen) were other local bowlers on that team.

In fact, Chris Sargent isn't the only Sargent in the record book. His father, Mike Sargent, of Bradford, owns the world record for five strings with a total of 840.

"The funny thing is I didn't take up bowling competitively until I was older, in my early 20s," said Sargent. "I watched my dad bowl a lot. He was awesome. My thing was hockey. But when I got older I started bowling ... and I haven't stopped."

13 is Sargent's new lucky number

It could be argued that candlepin bowling's version of the 300-game in 10-pin bowling is 200. Chris Sargent would probably agree. Prior to Friday night, he had bowled 200 or higher 12 times. He also had scored 500 or better for three strings 12 times. On Friday night, his three-string total was 510.

"I got a call from a friend who said, 'Did you realize that you have scored 200 (or higher) 13 times and you have scored 500 (or higher) for three strings 13 times? And you did it on Friday the 13th!'" said Sargent, of his feat on May 13. "It's pretty crazy when you think about it."

CANDLEPIN BOWLING FACTS

Candlepin bowling is a variation of bowling that is played primarily in the Canadian Maritime provinces, Ontario, Quebec, and the New England states of Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, where it is much more common than ten-pin bowling, as well as in one municipal bowling center in Wyoming, Ohio.

A unique feature of the candlepin sport is that fallen pins, usually called dead wood, are not removed from the pin deck area between balls, unlike either the tenpin or duckpin bowling sports.

The ball used in candlepins has a maximum weight of 1.1 kg (2 lb 7 oz), and has a maximum diameter of 11.43 cm (4¬ inches), making it the smallest bowling ball of any North American bowling sport. The nearly identical weight of the ball, when compared to that of just one candlepin, tends to cause rapidly-delivered balls to sometimes bounce at random when impacting a full rack of pins on the first delivery of a frame, and sometimes when hitting downed "dead wood" pins on subsequent deliveries.