Oh, so close. Alysha Cantu bowled a 299 recently at Glacier Lanes in Columbia Falls.

The 16-year-old was bowling in the Feb. 6 Wednesday youth league when she came just one pin shy of a perfect game.

Cantu was bowling by herself against the other team — her teammates were sick that day — when she kept getting strike after strike.

“The other team said, ‘Stop getting strikes,’” Cantu said last week. “I said, ‘I’m trying not to get strikes,’”

But the pins kept falling until the last frame.

“Usually my ball curves, and this one curved right into the pocket like it should have,” she said of her last shot. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘This should be it.’”

But the five pin, which is smack dab in the middle, right behind the head pin, stayed up.

“ ‘Are you kidding me?’ I said to myself,” Cantu recalled.

Cantu has only been bowling about three years. Her coach, Joe Wooten, helps her with her form. She averages about 153 normally.

Coming a whisker away from a perfect game has been a bit of a curse, she said. She’s been bowling poorly since then.

“I just broke 200 for the first time the other day,” she said.

Cantu goes to Columbia Falls High School and is also an avid softball player, where she plays third base and outfield. Last year, she played for the junior varsity squad and did well.