'We got another one:' Father-son duo pull off rare bowling feat

Jim Contos arrived at Metro Bowl, on Brink St. in Crystal Lake, the morning of Nov. 4 slightly frustrated, yet brimming with confidence.

The night before, Contos had rolled a 299 game. He felt he should have had the perfect game, but threw a “terrible ball” on his last roll.

“We were having coffee, getting ready for the day,” said John Contos, Jim’s son. “He says, ‘You know I’m throwing a 300 tonight.’ So I had to at least try to keep up with him.”

Jim Contos, who owns Metro Bowl, was not thrilled about his first game when he rolled a 144, more than 50 below his average. Everything after that was magical.

Jim, who bowls leadoff for his Metro Bowl team in Wednesday’s highly competitive league, found his groove rolling one strike after another. John, who bowls fourth, did the same.

Jason Waters, who bowls fifth in the team’s lineup and leads the league with a 249 average, also didn’t have a miss through seven frames.

Jim and John continued through the eighth and ninth without a miss. Then, Jim rolled three more strikes in the 10th for the second perfect game of his career.

A couple minutes later, after Metro’s Pat Tallungan and Mike Kilosky finished their games, John rolled three more strikes as well.

“It was a big party (after mine) and everybody just stopped in their tracks,” Jim Contos said. “ ‘We got another one!’ It was wild. It was just nuts.”

The Contoses believe they are the 12th father-son duo to roll 300 games in the same game. The U.S. Bowling Congress website lists the first time that happened as in 1993 and says “many others have since achieved this feat.”

Not to be outdone, Waters rolled another perfecto in Game 3 helping Metro Bowl establish the team series record (3,645). The team set the team single game record (1,302) in Game 2 and John Contos’ 827 series is the best ever rolled at Metro Bowl, ahead of Waters’ 805 from this February.

“You have to stay in kind of a partial conscious flow state in order to keep it going,” said John Contos, who has four certified perfect games. “We were kind of paying attention, but at the same time we were kind of in our own world, like a baseball player throwing a no-hitter. Nobody talks, you just keep on throwing.”

Jim Contos thought he and John were capable of such a rare feat.

“We both ran eight in a row once last year and I was telling John, ‘One of these years, we’re going to get a father-son 300,’ ” Jim Contos said. “You don’t think about it until the eighth or ninth frame, that’s the crunch time. It was a very proud moment.”

Bill Metropulos, Jim Contos’ grandfather, started the Metro Bowl in 1956. Metropulos’ sons-in-law, John Mozak and John Contos, took it over after him. Now Jim Contos and his family run the business.

Metro Bowl does not have monitors at the score table. Players write down their scores on paper, which may have alleviated some pressure since not everyone may have noticed two perfect games going on.

Waters, who lives in Algonquin and bowled at Penn State, knew what was going on.

“Three of us were perfect through seven,” said Waters, who lives in Algonquin and is general manager of The Club at Wynstone golf course in North Barrington. “We all had it kind of going. It’s kind of a benefit not having monitors. You just get up and concentrate on each shot. It was fun. We all had a good roll. When you get momentum like that, it’s easy to keep it going.”

In its record-setting second game, the Metro Bowl team all rolled strikes in the first, second, fifth, sixth and seventh frames.

“It’s gotten to the point where you have some really good bowlers and one of the most consistent shots (at Metro Bowl),” Waters said. “Jim and John keep the lanes well-conditioned, it helps people bowl better. The level of competition (on Wednesday) has gotten better.”

There are 50 players in the Wednesday league, half of which average 200 or better. making 200 the league median score.

A week after the Metro Bowl team rolled three 300 games on Lanes 3 and 4, another league player, Bob Miller, rolled another perfect game on those lanes.

John Contos said Metro Bowl had never before had perfect games on the same night before, let alone same game. He was thrilled for his father’s 300, but then had to face the pressure of his own potential perfect game.

“I tried to stay calm because I had one more frame,” John Contos said. “If you let your adrenaline go too high, it’s gone. It’s like maintaining that Zen focus and high levels of adrenaline to be able to stay with it. As soon as I released my last ball, I knew for a fact it was gone. As soon as it came off my hand.”

The Contoses now will fill out the proper paperwork, register their bowling balls so it’s known they were legal and then be recognized with the select few others by the USBC for their monumental accomplishment.

“This is a lifetime achievement,” Jim Contos said. Who knows if it’ll ever happen again? The way he’s bowling, if I ever get lucky, we could do it again. It was just great.”