Son puts father’s ashes in bowling ball and aces next game

A son in Illinois has come up with an apt way to honour his late father and the game he loved – ten pin bowling.

Bowling champion John Hinke Sr, who won the NCAA bowling championship twice, passed down the love of the game to his son John Hinke Jr. He also is a winner of the same competition as his dad and played in college while he was at Western Illinois University.

In a perfect tribute to his dad, who died in 2016, he chose to fill the thumb hole of his bowling ball with his father’s ashes. He went on to score a perfect 300 in the game, smashing down all ten pins on each go.

Speaking to WMBD-TV, he said: “I was talking to my brother and told him, ‘I’m shooting a 300 with this ball.

“And Joe said, ‘Do it’.”

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“I had tears in my eyes in the 11th and 12th frames.” he continued. “I couldn’t tell you where that last ball went, I had so many tears just throwing it.”

In a Facebook post written afterwards, he said it was an “epic night”. “I can’t express what it means to me,” he said.

This was not the first 300 game he had bowled but said that this one was particularly poignant as his dad, the man who instilled in him his love of bowling, had never scored a 300.

“It’s special. Dad shot 298, 299 - never had a 300. I had goosebumps, chills,” he wrote on Facebook. “He was there.”

John Jr’s brother Joe joked: “This makes up for so many nights growing up when we slept in a bowling alley while our parents were finishing league night.”