Editor’s note: The following story was submitted for the Shaler Area Student Section, a collaboration between TribLive and The Oracle, the student newspaper of Shaler Area High School.
Every athlete has dreamed of having the perfect game, whether it be a perfect game for baseball pitcher or a perfect 10 in gymnastics or a hole-in-one in golf.
This dream of perfection is chased by athletes from all sports.
A sport that’s often overlooked is bowling, but that doesn’t mean bowlers don’t strive for perfection, too. In bowling, a perfect game is a 300 score, which is 12 consecutive strikes.
Shaler Area High School senior Tyler Woistman came as close as one can to getting that perfect game when he bowled a 298.
Bowling a 298 is missing only two pins throughout the entire game: 11 strikes to start the game and an 8 count on the final ball.
“I knew after like five frames. ‘I’m like, ‘Wow, I actually have a chance to throw a 300 game. I just gotta stay calm,’ and I pretend like I didn’t have that many strikes,” Woistman said.
When he reached the 10th frame, he needed three more strikes for a perfect game and he knew it.
“I started to think about it, and I just threw two bad shots. They luckily were strikes. Then I got in my head on the last one and overthought it. I threw it too slow. I knew it off my hand. I’m like, ‘That’s not going to strike,’ ” Woistman said.
It was just as exciting for his teammates who watched the nearly perfect game and were quick to congratulate him afterward.
“Everyone said, ‘That’s such a good job. You did really good.’ I’m like, ‘It could have been so much better though,’ ” he said.
Before bowling season even started, Woistman was hard at work. He believes if he keeps practicing and working on his skills, he will achieve a 300 game by the end of the season.
“I practice three to four days a week, sometimes more,” Woistman said.
Bowling runs in the Woistman family with Tyler’s dad, Bill, being an accomplished bowler who has bowled several perfect games in his career.
Tyler never enjoyed competitive bowling when he was younger and simply saw it as something to do until his dad encouraged him to be passionate about it.
“I did not like bowling very much. Bowling was not my favorite, but (my dad) has been helping me so much and I’ve just loved it. It’s been my favorite sport for two or three years now. I’m so happy that I keep practicing and getting better at it every time,” he said.
The elder Woistman shares advice and helps his son get to bowling lanes to practice at least four days a week, even when the sport is out of season.
“Tyler’s hard work and dedication and his ability to learn from his mistakes has helped him to grow as a bowler,” he said.
To reach a score this high, Woistman must complete a significant skill that his dad taught him at a young age. He does not have to hope to get lucky, he just has to do what he was taught to do.
“The skill you have to learn is to learn how to hook the ball, which isn’t as easy as people think. It’s never luck-based. There’s a lot more skill actually put into it than people might think,” Woistman said.
Hooking the ball is just step one of the process — it helps make it easier to rotate the ball, but few know how to do that correctly.
Adding rotation is possible without hooking, but if someone wanted to aim where the ball would go, they would struggle because the bowling lane itself is not level.
None of the bowling lanes are the same. Each one is different whether it’s more slick or more dull.
Each one is like a different course, meaning Woistman has to have a slightly different strategy for every course he plays on. It’s similar to how racers have different strategies when navigating various courses.
“To add rotation to the ball, it’s hard to just throw it straight because if you do that you won’t hit anything. You have to hit a specific part of the headpin every time. But if you hook the ball, it can hook right into the headpin and all the pins will fall down,” Woistman said.
With this strategy and skill, Woistman can maintain multiple strikes in a game. He also can aim the ball and guide it to where he wants it to go. But to get multiple strikes in a row, he has another strategy.
“It might sound bad, but I basically just tell all the people around me to not talk to me. Don’t say my score out loud. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t think about it. I don’t think about the score. I just go into the next shot thinking, ‘How can I repeat this shot? What can I do to repeat it?’ ” Woistman said.
Woistman’s future in bowling won’t end with high school. He has received a scholarship to bowl for Robert Morris University (club team) that covers about 80% of his tuition. His skills helped carve $24,000 off his loans.
“I’m just happy to go to college, go with my new teammates, have new people to bounce off of and get better off of them. They could show me stuff that will help me improve personally. And it’s nice to be on a team that can help me and make me a better bowler,” Woistman said.