Wilbur’s perfect game odyssey

North Clarendon’s Jon Wilbur remembers the first 300 game he bowled. Everyone does. It’s like that hole-in-one for a golfer.

He believes it came in 1999 and it was in the Green Mountain Open at Rutland’s Bowlerama.

“Lanes 17 and 18,” he said on Wednesday morning.

Perfect games were not easy to come by in 1999.

“Back then, they were much rarer,” Wilbur said. “You didn’t know if you’d get another.”

But Wilbur did get another. And another. And another and another.

When he rolled a 300 game recently, it was his 150th perfect game.

He put the latest 300 in his collection at the Broadway Bowl in nearby Fort Edward, New York. Composure is a key ingredient of Wilbur’s game but he admitted he was a little nervous that day in Fort Edward. He had not rolled a 300 since November or December, a longer-than-usual “dry” spell for him.

He was beginning to wonder when and if the next perfect game was going to come and he was not his usual cool self.

“As far as I know, the 150 300 games are the tops in the state. Nationally, it probably isn’t that high,” Wilbur said, noting his friend Adam Barta in Ohio has about 260 or 270 perfect games.

Wilbur says improvements to equipment and the lanes have made the perfect game more attainable now than when he put that first one in the books.

“Hooks are actually built into some of the ball now,” he said. “But it is still a good accomplishment.”

Wilbur’s 100th perfect score also came at the Green Mountain Open, on lanes 13-14 at Rutland’s Bowlerama.

His career includes the ultra rare 900 series.

“That is the Mecca, the thing everyone strives for every night but it doesn’t happen,” Wilbur said.

His resume is lengthy but just a few of the highlights include winning the Bowling Journal Tournament with Connecticut’s Todd Lathrop in El Paso, Texas in 2015, three New England Bowling Championships and being inducted into the Vermont Bowling Hall of Fame.

He hopes to make a lot more noise in July when he competes at the United States Bowling Congress Open in Las Vegas.

He has finished in the top five there before but has never brought home the prestigious eagle trophy.

“I have never won one. That is a huge goal of mine,” Wilbur said.

Brunswick has been a sponsor that has furnished Wilbur with equipment, something he is extremely grateful for.

He is in his 17th year working at the Bowlerama. It is a job that he cherishes because his employer is willing to accommodate his bowling schedule even when he must go far from home as he will do next month in Las Vegas.

When you get that first 300 game, you dream about getting another. It is an elite few who would even dare to dream about 150 of them.

tom.haley

@rutlandherald.com