Beane rolls first 300 game, nets 2nd ace

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Herb Beane has spent a lot of time in a bowling alley. For the past 11 or 12 years, the Bangor native has bowled in two leagues each week at Family Fun Lanes in Bangor.

So, when things started getting quiet in the lanes a couple of weeks ago during the Friday Senior Mixed League, he knew what was going on. Beane had been there before with someone on track for a perfect 300 game. Only this time, he was the guy.

“The rest of the league had stopped and was watching. They were right behind me when I bowled the last three strikes,” the 71-year-old Beane said.

It was Beane’s first 300 game.

“It’s a little nerve-wracking. I thought I held it together pretty good. I said, ‘If I do it, I do it. If I don’t, I don’t.’ You get to a certain age, you don’t care,” Beane said.

Beane carries a 180 average in his two leagues and came up with a solid 224 in the game following his 300. He finished with a 721 series for the three games.

“Lots of times if you have a good game like that you drop off in the next game. But I came right back with a 224,” Beane said.

The 300 game caps a good year athletically for Beane. Late in the summer he connected for a hole-in-one on the 160-yard, 16th hole at Bangor Municipal Golf Course.

“I had no idea that was going to happen. The wind was blowing hard and I took just a 4-iron, just wanting to get it on the green and it went it,” Beane said.

It was his second hole-in-one. Beane also connected on a hole-in-one on the 12th hole at Hermon Meadows in 1995.

“Miracles never cease,” Beane said. “It has been a very good year.”

On the road to the NHL

The road to the NHL is dotted with a thousand towns from Tupelo, Miss., to Fairbanks, Alaska. Bangor’s Chris Shepley is on that road. In fact, he’s on it a lot.

Shepley is a hockey referee working United States Junior A and B leagues.

“It involves a lot of driving,” Shepley said. “In the month and half I’ve been out here, I’ve put 13,000 on my car.”

Shepley attended Bangor High School for two years before attending a prep school in Massachusetts. Colby was next, where he played hockey for four years. When he was finished he decided he wanted to stay involved in hockey.

While working on his master’s degree in industrial psychology at Springfield College in Massachusetts, Shepley refereed youth hockey games.

Then, while attending a camp for the top 20 junior officials on the East Coast, Shepley was contacted by the head of USA Junior Hockey officiating, who invited Shepley to move out to the Midwest and officiate.

Shepley, 26, works in three major Junior A leagues and a Junior B league. The players range in age from 15 to 20 and the leagues prepare players for the college game.

“They play in front of crowds of six to 7,000 people. It’s big business. Last year they had more than 1,000,000 people at their games,” Shepley said.

The leagues own apartments in Omaha, Neb., and Billings, Mont. that the referees use. Otherwise they live out of suitcases in motels.

“There’s a lot of down time but we spend that [time] reviewing game tapes and evaluating ourselves,” Shepley said.

Part of the learning process involves recognizing when he has made a mistake.

“I feel like I’m enjoying it and learning a lot. When you make a mistake, you realize it and you deal with it. Five to 6,000 people let you know. The best thing to do is to tell the coach when I make a mistake. The worst thing you can do is act like you’re right,” Shepley said.

Shepley spoke as he was traveling back to his Omaha apartment after a weekend working games in Springfield, Mo. Tonight he will be in Minnesota and then he’ll work games in Wisconsin over the weekend.

He hopes that someday he’ll trade in Billings, Mont., for Boston, Chicago and other NHL cities.

“You shoot for that goal. Generally, the NHL [officials] stay there until they retire. I would love to drop the puck at the FleetCenter with the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens. That’s a dream. That’s a long way off. But it’s starting to get closer.”

Don Perryman’s Local Spotlight column is published every Wednesday. He can be reached at 990-8092, 1-800-310-8600 or dperryman@bangordailynews.net