Bowling team throws 3 perfect 300 games

While Justin Juarez waits for his turn to bowl, he sits at the small round table behind his lane, cards in hand for a simultaneous poker game, and he talks about his bowling career.

The 21-year-old from East Meadow bowls for St. John’s University and in the Tuesday Early Men’s Invitational League at the AMF Syosset Lanes, where he was on Tuesday night.

He first picked up a bowling ball when he was 4 years old, he said.

“So what was that, seven years ago?” interjects his teammate in the Syosset league, Joe Verini, who is 65.

Juarez plays in the Syosset league as a frequent substitute for The Grumpy Old Men and the Juniors, a team that also includes “juniors” Michael Lirio, 21, of Farmingdale, and Thomas Colon, 23, of North Massapequa; and “old men” Verini, 65, of Hicksville, and Joe Gemmo, 66, of Huntington.

“It is a unique make up to say the least,” said league secretary Ira Yourman, adding that members of the league range from their 20s to their 60s, but no other team represents both extremes.

It’s a dynamic that seems to be working. On Feb. 28, The Grumpy Old Men and the Juniors bowled the second-highest scoring game for a four-man team on record at the U.S. Bowling Congress, which records league scores from across the country.

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That night, Verini, Gemmo, Colon and Juarez bowled an 1158 in their first game. Three of the men bowled perfect 300s. Gemmo scored a 258.

“I happened to drag the team down,” Gemmo said. He left one pin standing in the second and seventh frames, and also on his last ball in the last frame.

Jim Michalek, of the U.S. Bowling Congress Information Center, said the current first-place record is 1165, which was bowled in 2010 in Levittown.

He said The Grumpy Old Men and the Juniors have a good shot at high score for the year.

“It’s one heck of a score,” he said. “That’s phenomenal.”

Yourman said as the game progressed that night, murmurs started to travel down the lanes until everyone in the league realized three guys were going for perfect games.

“It was very exciting,” he said. “It was really kind of unreal.”

He said the fact that three people on the team did so well is what makes the score even more exciting. He said if each of those men would have bowled their average score, the total game score would have been 842.

Gemmo said by the end of the game, at least 200 people were gathered behind lanes 45 and 46, where his team was bowling.

“Anytime someone is going for a 300 game, all the people gather around because we love to see a perfect game,” he said.

He said the entire alley went quiet as the last person - Juarez - bowled his last frame. Juarez got the strike and the whole league erupted in cheers.

Juarez, who has thrown 12 perfect games in his lifetime, said this was his most nerve-racking.

“I didn’t think about it at all until the 10th frame,” he said. “I wanted it so bad, for the team more than myself.”

Though Gemmo and Verini have been bowling together for 12 years, they picked up their “juniors” at the start of the season when their former teammates moved on (they were also young guys, but not as young as Juarez, Lirio, and Colon, Gemmo said).

Lirio, who has a wrist injury and called in for a sub the night of the record game, said the team gets along really well, playing poker at the table and making jokes with each other throughout their games. But most importantly, they can all bowl a great game.

“They’re very nice guys, we get along great,” he said. “And I know they can shoot out a crazy 300 out of nowhere.”