Ty Whiteman poses for a photo at Cody’s Superbowl Lanes and Lounge, flanked by a scoreboard featuring his recent 300 game and 820 and 807 series.

Courtesy photo

The novel coronavirus interrupted what was a torrid stretch of bowling for Ty Whiteman.

In December, the 24-year-old Powell resident became the youngest bowler to roll an 800 series at Cody’s Superbowl Lanes and Lounge, knocking down enough pins in three games for an 820 series. Whiteman followed that up with an 807 series in February, and in between, he achieved perfection: posting a perfect 300 game in late January.

“It was a great three months of bowling,” he said.

Whiteman is an avid bowler, competing in leagues in Cody and Lovell on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays last winter.

But the Friday night he rolled the perfect game — during the Jan. 24 qualifying for the Cody USBC Master and Queens tournament — was an unplanned outing.

Whiteman’s friend, Kyle Woodward, wanted to try out a new ball, so the pair signed up for the qualifier at the last minute. The night at the Superbowl didn’t start well.

“I sucked my first two games. They were terrible … by my book,” Whiteman said of the 180-something and 190-something games.

As the third and final game got going, Whiteman was more interested in getting done and generally having a good time.

“Next thing I know, we’re in the … seventh or eighth frame and my friend [Woodward], he hits me on the shoulder and he’s like, ‘Dude, finish it. Let’s go, right here,’” he recalled. “And at that point I’m like, ‘What am I doing?’”

Whiteman looked up at the scoreboard to see a solid row of X’s.

“It was pretty shaky that frame,” he said, but he got through it with another strike.

By the time the 10th frame arrived — with Whiteman still on track for a perfect game — a crowd had gathered.

“Everyone had their phones out,” he said.

Whiteman’s first ball of the final frame registered another strike, leaving just two more to go.

At that point, “the weight of the world starts setting in,” he said.

Whiteman’s throw on the second ball of the frame was a little too fast, “but I got lucky,” he said. “I got a lot of lucky pinfall and luckily, all 10 fell over.”

That’s all the luck he would need.

On the third and final ball of the frame, the clincher, “it felt really good coming off of my hand,” he said. “And going down the lane, I’m like, if this doesn’t strike, I don’t deserve a [300].”

“And yeah, it got the job done,” he said.

As the pins fell to the floor, Whiteman celebrated in front of a crowd of bowlers he knew from his earliest days of bowling.

“It’s so weird. You throw one ball and there’s so much tension riding on one thing you do in your life and then after that ... there is no tension. This weight of the world is gone,” he said.

Whiteman has been bowling competitively since about the time he entered kindergarten.

“I was interested in it before I was in school,” he said. With his parents being longtime bowlers, “it was always in my family,” he said.

Whiteman hopes to encourage more elementary, middle and high school students to take up the game, noting there are multiple scholarship opportunities.

“I want the younger generation to get into it,” he said.

When Whiteman first took up the sport, he got instruction from Mick Walker, the late owner of the former Classic Lanes in Powell. He received youth coaching from the late Dave Pollock and now receives assistance from Robert Brown of Cody. Brown has more than two dozen perfect games to his name and has qualified to bowl on the PBA tour.

Whiteman hopes to eventually catch up to his coach’s feats, as well as those of a man he calls a “friendly rival.”

“I have many more 300s and many more 800s to even come close to either of them,” Whiteman said.

The bowler’s chances of extending his hot streak into a fourth month were cut short when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down bowling alleys across the country in mid-March.

“Here we are just hanging out, waiting for the … something to pick up,” he said in an early April interview.

Whiteman had hoped the state’s final bowling tournament of the season, the High 5, might go on as scheduled in June, but it’s since been canceled. But the sport may return soon: Bowling alleys in Lincoln County, Wyoming, were allowed to reopen last week under new precautions and the United States Bowling Congress unveiled a series of rule changes — including allowing bowlers to stay on just one lane for an entire game.

The Superbowl Lanes and Lounge has been reminding its customers that the disruption is only temporary, sharing updates to Facebook with the hashtag #wewillbowlagain.