The Pro Bowl West team in the Eastgate Men’s league broke the city record for a five-man game twice Monday night. By the time they were through, Frank and Chris Massengale, Chris Cross, Gary Workman and Anthony Reviere had set city, state and national series records with a scratch 3,937.

This is no April Fools’ hoax.

“I’m unbelievably proud,” Frank Massengale, the team captain, said soon after the accomplishment. “It’s just an awesome feeling. We didn’t realize we set a national record till I made a couple of phone calls.”

His son led the records assault with a first-game 290 and an 828 series, five pins shy of his personal best.

Cross got to 805 with a third-game 290, and Frank Massengale and Workman each had a 279 in their 784 and 772 totals. Reviere rolled a 748 series.

“We all were feeding off each other,” Cross said Tuesday. “It was an out-of-body-experience kind of thing. It seemed unreal.”

Monday was the last night of the league regular season, and Cross echoed Frank Massengale in saying the team’s goal was to win four games to make the postseason roll-offs. Total pins counted as the fourth game. Obviously, Pro Bowl West made the roll-offs easily. The team had the four best series and the sixth best in league play Monday.

League secretary Scott Nesbitt checked further Tuesday to confirm the national record.

“It’s an honor that it came from the league that I run,” Nesbitt said.

The previous Chattanooga Area Bowling Association and Tennessee State Bowling Association five-person game record was 1,339, set by Russell Gilbert’s team in the Eastgate league in September 2005. Massengale knew that record and also the best city series — last year’s 3,733 from his own team, the same five guys who bowled Monday.

He remembered they were 13 pins short of the state record set in October 1997 by a Nashville team, so he knew what that was also.

And Pro Bowl West shattered that by 191 pins.

The national record, though, was a surprise bonus. The old standard of 3,934 was set five years ago today in New Castle, Del.