Kay Perry cradles the candlepin bowling ball in her paper-thin hands and sends it gently down the lane.

The 79-year-old bowling champion from Cherryfield won’t win any records for speed, but she’s accurate – the small ball travels straight as an arrow down the wooden lane and knocks the pins over, sending them tumbling slowly over one by one.

The thin gold wedding band is loose on her ring finger as Perry jots the final tally – a respectable score of 101 – into her wire-bound notebook.

“I just throw the ball,” she said with a cackling laugh. “If I hit them, fine. If I don’t, I don’t.”

There is both philosophy and coyness in Perry’s summation of her skills at the sport that she has practiced for decades, because whether she’ll cotton to it or not, the tiny bowler is good.

“She does well for her age, and I’m glad to have her for a partner,” Dickie Bunker of Franklin, Perry’s partner in the Couples’ Bowling League at the Eastward Bowling Lanes in Ellsworth, said. “We do all right for a bunch of old people. She’s a good bowler.”

The couple has won the league for two years running and is working hard to bring home their third championship.

“It is fun,” Bunker said of candlepin bowling. “You get out, you talk to people and raise the devil.”

For Perry, it is something more – she has some serious health problems, including a bout with stomach cancer and diabetes, and bowling is, she said, her “only exercise.” She rests in between sets, gathering her strength to propel the ball down the lane one more time.

“I tell everybody as long as I get out of bed and my feet hit the floor before my face, I’ve got it made,” she joked.

She bowled with her husband until his death in 1982. Now, her children help get her to and from the lanes and provide a low-key cheering squad.

“We’re pretty proud of her,” her daughter, Kathy Lugdon of Cherryfield, said. “She enjoys it. What else are you going to do at 79?”

Maine’s dedicated coterie of candlepin bowlers are part of a New England tradition that stretches back to 1880, when the sport was developed in Worcester, Mass., by a bowling alley owner. The lighter balls used in the game mean that everyone, from children to frail elderly folks, can participate. The fact that knocking over the smaller pins can be more challenging than in the ten-pin variety keeps them coming back for more.

“It’s a hard sport,” Eastward Bowling Lanes owner Del Gaspar said. “The sport’s a lot harder than ten-pin.”

Candlepin bowling is mainly found in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Gaspar said that aficionados drive to his lanes from Washington County, Bar Harbor, and the Blue Hill peninsula. He and his wife, Judy Gaspar, built the Eastward Lanes in 1974. After 45 years in the candlepin bowling business, Gaspar said that its popularity is holding steady.

“Maine is basically mostly candlepins,” he said. “It’s because it’s what most people grew up with.”

Mike Goslin, owner of the Good Time Lanes in Lisbon Falls, elaborated further.

“I’m busy,” he said. “My leagues are full. Public bowling is fantastic.”

Candlepin bowling, he enthused, is a time for families to get together and spend a happy afternoon with more quality time and less cost than a matinee at the movies.

“They get to interact together, get to talk, laugh, have a decent time together and they spend less money,” he said. “It’s really like the best kept secret in the United States.”

On the Sunday afternoon when Perry bowled, making up for a Friday night couples’ league event that she missed because of bad weather, families crowded the lanes to her left. One mother helped her toddling, towheaded son use both hands to roll a bowling ball a few feet down the lane before it wobbled into the gutter. An older man showed off some slick moves that put him in a rock solid first place in his multigenerational family group. It was noisy, and cheerful, and the sound of balls reverberating down the wooden lanes was matched by the happy chatter of bowlers.

Not so in Perry’s end of the lane.

The 90-pound bowler was focused. She was quiet, aiming to beat her 86 average. She was attentive as she dabbed at her hands with a sponge so that the balls “don’t slip too much.” And in the end, after an underwhelming string that only scored 68 points, she was resigned.

“It’s fun,” she said, and repeated her mantra. “You just stand there and throw the ball. If you hit ’em, you hit ’em and if you don’t, you don’t.”

“Candlepin Bowling” has been broadcast from Augusta since 1997 on Adelphia Channel 9. Most of the other shows have gone off the air due to slipped ratings. Abigail Curtis can be reached at 667-9395 and acurtis@bangordailynews.net.

Candlepin bowling

. Each player uses three balls per frame.

. The balls are smaller and do not have holes.

. The fallen pins are not cleared away between balls.

. Pins are thinner and harder to knock down.

. The highest officially sanctioned score is 245 out of a possible 300 points.