Perfect Game

As printed in the Coeur d’Alene Press 7/5/08

By AMANDA WINTERS
Staff Writer

“Davenport is perfect,” read the headline in a Georgia paper where Tom Davenport bowled his first perfect 300 game a decade ago. Since then, the Coeur d’Alene man has bowled two more 300’s, and in December set a new city record of 838 for a three game series with the Sundowners mixed league at the Sunset Bowling Center.

“After I threw the last ball in the third game, Dave Barnes comes up, shakes my hand and says ‘I think you just set a new city record.’” Davenport said.

The scores Davenport posted in the three games were 269, 300 and 269. Davenport said he didn’t know if he’d ever bowl an 800 game. He considers himself a late-blooming-bowler since he didn’t bowl very often, or seriously, until he was 23 years old. That’s when he moved to Atlanta, Ga., and met fellow Delta Airline employee, Roy Lefevre.

“Everyone always said, ‘Roy is a good bowler,’” Davenport said. “I always thought I was pretty good even though I’d never really seriously (bowled). So one day I challenged him and said I bet I could beat him. I was wrong.”

That day they went to a pro bowling shop and Davenport bought his first bowling ball. Since that moment, bowling has been one of Davenport’s biggest hobbies and passions, which he shares with his wife, Kristina, and their three children: Mikayla, 12, and 7-year-old twins Cody and Jackson.

“When I first met him I was like, ‘Oh my gosh you’re a bowler,’” Kristina said. “Now that I understand how hard it is to get a score like that it’s pretty impressive.”

In 2006, Davenport was on the team that won Idaho’s state bowling tournament. He considers that win the biggest accomplishment of his bowling career, a long shot from throwing the ball down the lane and hoping for the best as he did growing up.

“It’s tough for a group of five guys to all bowl well at the same time,” he said.

The men on that team are part of group of eight or 10 men Davenport said are not only his team mates but also some of his closest friends. He said the men comprising the Frame and Smetana Engineering team as well as the Durk Wholesale Lumber team are the reason he has continued bowling over the past five years since moving to Coeur d’Alene.

“In all the years I’ve been bowling, I haven’t been with a group of guys like this,” Davenport said. “We’re friends and teammates but above that there’s a place in my heart for all of them. I’ve learned more from bowling in the last four or five years than ever. I owe it to these guys. They have pushed me to the level I’m at.”

Jack Smetana, president of the Idaho State Bowling Association, is the team captain of the Frame and Smetana team. Smetana said that in its hay day bowling was a team sport. But often people see it as an individual sport.

“Tom is a great team player,” Smetana said. “Not a lot of teams feature good chemistry, but we do.”

Smetana said Davenport brings not only an advanced level of skill, but also an earnest desire to learn and understand the game. There are a number of small adjustments that a bowler must make in order to make the shot and Smetana said he has seen Davenport improve that part of his game tremendously over the past several years they’ve bowled together.

While Davenport has three bowling pin trophies for posting a 300, a plaque for the Most Outstanding Accomplishment for his 838 series, three rings from the United States Bowling Congress for 300 games and one from an 800 game, he still easily admits he sometimes bowls some lousy games.

“Last year I did shoot a 120-something and a couple 130-somethings,” he said. “A 500 series is not good - but it happens. That’s what keeps me coming back to the game every week: You don’t always bowl well and it’s a challenge.”

The most challenging league he’s ever participated in was a Wednesday night merchant league last season, September - June, where they changed the oil pattern on the lane every six weeks.

“If you miss too far to the right, that ball might go into the gutter,” he said. “It humbles me because I’m used to averaging 200, but in that Wednesday night league I averaged 193.”

Davenport said he’s not concerned about wear-and-tear on his shoulders, but has in the past had concerns about his fingers. Up until last August, Davenport was an airplane mechanic and would sometimes slip with a wrench while working around pieces of sharp metal - running the risk of breaking a finger.

“It concerned me sometimes when I would slip off,” he said, flexing his fingers and exhaling with relief. “Then you think, ‘Yeah, I can still bowl.’”

Davenport knows his passion for bowling is something not everyone can understand. People who don’t know very much about the game often find it boring, like his wife did before she learned how much goes into the game.

“It’s a sport,” he said. “I don’t care what anybody says.”

Davenport said his future with bowling lies with the leagues he has stuck with for the past five years, and hopes one day they can make it to the top 100 in the national tournament this February, where approximately 16,000 teams compete. Last year the team made it to the top 300.

“I can’t imagine bowling on a team without any of them, I really can’t,” Davenport said.

The headline from his first 300 game remains in his “bowling drawer.” A reminder, he said, of one of the few times in his life he was perfect.