‘I was shaking.’ Coast high school bowler turns in perfect performance on the big stage.

Hancock senior Nicholas Cumberland came close to bowling a perfect game in practice Tuesday with nine straight strikes before he left a 10 pin in the 10th frame.

On Thursday during the MHSAA Class III state tournament, he closed the deal. He had 12 straight strikes for a 300 – a perfect game.

It was his first 300 game with his previous best being a 279.

MHSAA executive director Don Hinton said he believes it is the first 300 game ever in the state championship tournament.

Cumberland started thinking about the possibility of 300 after the fifth frame, and he was nervous thinking about the near miss two days earlier.

“I was shaking,” he said.

There were no missed pockets in which all the pins happened to fall, a not uncommon occurrence in bowling.

“Everyone was a strike shot. It was beautiful every shot,” he said.

He wasn’t the only one nervous. His father, Nicholas Cumberland Sr., was watching.

“It was nerve racking, especially in the 10th frame,” he said.

His father got Cumberland started bowling at Park Ten Lanes in Diamondhead when he was five years old

“I’ve been bowling for a long time,” the younger Cumberland said.

Cumberland is a three-sport athlete for Hancock High School and two are in the winter. He splits his time between bowling and soccer as a midfielder.

Hancock coach Trevin Burge said Cumberland missed some time with the bowling team due to soccer, but the senior said balancing the two sports had not been a problem.

In the spring, he is a golfer and that is the sport he hopes to play at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Perkinston.

He might bowl at the collegiate level “if I get an offer. But I’m going to try to play golf.”

The 300 performance came in the second of three games during the tournament at Metro 24 Bowling Center in Jackson.

Understandably suffering an emotional let down, he bowled 163 in the final game.

“The lanes started breaking to the right and I couldn’t keep up with it,” Nicholas Cumberland Jr. said. “I didn’t make the transition fast enough.”

This story was originally published February 13, 2020 at 2:02 PM.