Holy roller: Teen recently diagnosed with cancer bowls perfect game

15-year-old Alex Dupuy scores his first 300

A Louisiana teen with a rare form of tongue cancer bowled a perfect game this week, rolling strike after strike after strike as a crowd of friends and strangers cheered him on.

Alex Dupuy, 15, told the Advocate that he started feeling nervous around the 10th frame.

“It was nerve-wracking,” the member of the Holy Rosary bowling team said. “I really had a hard time bowling. I just kept telling myself to breathe in, breathe out.”

Perhaps even more amazing is that Alex is relatively new to the game of bowling. The Advocate reports that he started in October 2012. And then just recently, on Feb. 3, he was diagnosed with a rare form of tongue cancer.

From the Advocate:

“He was a little down and depressed and a little scared like all 15-year-olds would be,” his mom said. “But bowling has really got him through it. Bowling is such a big part of his life. It was very devastating when we found out. But we had to stay strong for our child and keep the faith. We have a lot of people praying for him and it helps having so much support.”

Alex told WBNO that he traveled to the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for treatment this week. "I'll be all right," he told the station.

A perfect game in bowling involves getting 12 strikes (all 10 pins knocked down with one toss) in a row in a single game. It's exceedingly rare, especially for high school students. Near as we can tell, not even legendary fictional bowler Big Ern McCracken ever rolled one.

Follow Mike Krumboltz on Twitter (@mikekrumboltz).