Steve Brownlee

The bowling season often starts a bit slow in September, builds momentum as temperatures cool, then hits a crescendo just when winter’s bite starts to really sting.

Supposedly, the scores will fall as spring arrives, but don’t tell that to Justin Stephens.

For the second time in four years, the 39-year-old Negaunee resident — he just had his birthday last Monday — waited till this late in the bowling season to put together one of the biggest three-game series ever bowled in this area.

He followed up the highest-ever area series of 862 in April 2013 with the fourth highest set of 855 last week in the Tuesday Major League that he serves as secretary-treasurer.

In addition, Steve Windahl, owner of the highest series in the area for 18 years, rolled a 300 in that same league a week earlier, while Brenda Carlson hit her fourth 700 series this season in between the two men’s feats.

Both of Stephens’ gigantic late-season series came in the Tuesday Major, the 2013 one when the center was known as Country Lanes and the latest as River Rock Lanes.

Each series included a perfect 300 game, this time in the middle game. Stephens opened with an 11-strike 279 and finished with another 11-strike 276.

That’s 34 strikes in 36 shots. Wow.

It also goes to show why an 800 series is so difficult to attain. Despite not getting a strike on just two shots out of three dozen all night, he fell nearly halfway back from 900 to 800. Two fewer strikes, and one of them not spared, and he could’ve missed 800 altogether.

Stephens now has four of the top six series ever bowled in this area, which includes an 856 in December 2008 at Superior Lanes in Marquette and an 847 rolled in December 2014 when the Ishpeming center was known as Red Rock Lanes.

This time around he was coming back from taking a rare week off when he went on vacation in Arizona the last week of March.

He had recently broken out his 15-pound Roto Grip Haywire reactive resin ball and had good success with it, shooting three series in the 750s and 760s just before his break.

“I got that ball at the beginning of (the 2015-16) season, but it had only really worked in Marquette,” Stephens told me. “I was kind of in a slump, so I figured I needed to do something different on Tuesday in Ishpeming.”

He explained that with end-of-the-season playoffs coming up he was happy to find a ball that worked well for him at River Rock.

“Then an hour before I was leaving town on vacation, I thought I better clean (that) ball. That’s when I discovered a piece of the finger hole had cracked, so I hurried up and dropped the ball off at (River Rock) and luckily someone was there and I was able to get in the door.

“I left a note on the ball saying, ‘I need that ball,’ and they were able to fix it for me while I was gone.”

It would be easy enough to describe each frame — strike, strike, strike … — but quicker to describe the frames that weren’t strikes.

In the first game he rolled the first seven strikes.

“Then I left a ringing 10-pin,” Stephens said. “That kills me every time.”

He struck out to finish Game 1, rolled 12 in a row in Game 2 and threw two more in Game 3, 18 consecutive strikes in all.

He and another fellow bowler said his only bad shot of the night was in the third frame of the final game, a 3-6-9-10 combination on a ball that went through the nose.

“I got a little slow with that one,” Stephens said.

Windahl’s 300 was also the middle game of a 689 series that opened with 191 and ended with 198.

The 50-year-old Ishpeming resident thinks it’s his 31st one — “they probably aren’t counting a couple of unsanctioned ones” — as he used a 16-pound Motiv Jackal resin.

“The shot seemed to settle in after the first game, then all of a sudden they dried up a little bit and my carry was gone the third game,” he explained about his up-and-down night.

He had good timing, though, as his son Jordan was bowling with him that night.

He was the owner of what was believed to be the Upper Peninsula’s highest series of 857 from 1995 until Stephens topped it in 2013.

Carlson, 49, of Negaunee rolled the same 700 series — 713 — she did in her very first 700 she bowled back in February 1999 at Country Lanes.

This one came in the Friday 800 Mixed at Superior Lanes on games of 247, 247 and 219.

She was happy to report it was a “clean” series — no missed spares — and it didn’t hurt bowling with some quality men bowlers like Scott Salminen and Matt Adams.

“That really pushes me,” she said.

In mid-February, she bowled a 700 in the Wisconsin Women’s State Tournament in Wausau, she thinks a big 755, both when she used her Motiv Trident resin, one she got for Christmas.

Steve Brownlee can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.