Sheppard sergeant scores 300

SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE -- Bowling a perfect game, 12 strikes in a row for a total of 300 points, is a rare event. Most bowlers never see someone bowl a perfect game, let alone do it themselves. 

Victoria Bartos, a maintenance management production instructor with the 360th Training Squadron, became the 25th person at the South Bowling Lanes to bowl a 300 Oct. 12, and only the second woman ever. Bartos said she never planned or imagined she would be a 300-bowler. 

"I had never seen anyone bowl a 300 before," Bartos said. "I heard of it, but never seen it." 

On her 12th and final ball, Bartos may have seemed calm and composed, but inside she said she felt a degree of nervousness. 

"I wasn't shaking, I wasn't sweating," Bartos said. "But I could feel my heart beating between me and the ball." 

Leading up to the fateful night, Bartos had 26 years of experience behind her, having bowled since she was four. 

"Everyone in my family bowls," Bartos said.
She said that it was her father who taught her to bowl, and he was the first person she called. There was no rolling the ball down the lane in her house though. 

"The law in our house was you weren't allowed to bowl until you could put your fingers in the hole," Bartos said. 

The sport she learned as a child went with her when she joined the Air Force 11 year ago and she's bowled at every base she was stationed, whether in Texas or in England. 

"It's one of those things I've been doing forever," Bartos said. "I can do it anywhere I go."
Bartos said she bowls at least twice a week, on Thursday nights with her league team, Undecided, and on Friday with the 360th TRS intramural team. 

It was at a league game bowling with the Undecided that she bowled her perfect game.
She went on to say that her ball, and the person who drilled it for her, Steve Sowards, was an integral part of her score. 

"It's not just always the operator," Bartos said. "Sometimes it's the stuff you have, too."