KUCHING: State junior bowlers dominated the Sarawak Closed Bowling Championship that ended last Sunday, with national youth and Sukma bowlers Chong Jun Foo taking the Open Division and Nurafidza Mohd Amran winning the Ladies Division crowns.
Chong was simply in superb form on Sunday to beat 23 others in the Open Division where he topped the two blocks of 24 games by falling a total of 5,220 pins, hitting an average of 217 pinfalls per game.
In the play-off for the title, the 17-year-old form five student from SMK St Thomas beat fellow Sukma bowler Muhd Syafiq Sazeli by ten pins (191-181) to collect the champion’s trophy and RM3,000.
Chong’s other achievements this year included four gold and one silver at Sukma XIII in Melaka in June, Boys Open bronze at the 8th Indonesia International Open Championship, Boys Under 18 Team gold at the MSSM Bowling Championship, Boys Doubles silver at the 23rd Malaysia Interstate Championship and Boys Open bronze at the 24th Malaysia National Championship.
Muhd Syafiq, who ousted former state kegler Kelvin Eng and defending champion Bong Kihow who is also a Sukma bowler in the semi-finals by felling 207 pins to Eng’s 152 pins and Bong’s 157 pins, collected RM1,500 and a trophy for his effort.
Eng received RM1,000 and a trophy while Bong got RM750 and a trophy.
Earlier in the week, Chong also won the Youth Boys title by downing 1,749 pinfalls in the 13-bowler contest played over eight games.
He won RM400 while runner-up Bong (Kihow), who felled 1,669 pins, received RM300 and another RM100 for a high game of 245 pins.
In third was Abang Nazreen Firdaus Azahari with 1,660 pinfalls to collect RM200 while in fourth place was Jeremy Jerome Jonathan who had 1,659 pinfalls to receive RM100.
Nurafidza also bagged a double in the championship by winning the Ladies Division and Youth Girls Division.
She out bowled ten other competitors in the Ladies Division by scoring a total of 1,960 pinfalls from nine games to collect RM500 and a trophy.
Fifteen pins behind the champion was former Sukma bowler Caroline Chien who collected RM400 and a trophy while up and upcoming junior bowler from the Sibu development squad Nadine Kong came in third with 1,901 pinfalls to receive RM250 and a trophy, and fourth placed Jocelyn Judith Jonathan (1,895 pins) collected RM100.
In the Youth Girls contest that only saw six participants, Nurafidza came out tops with 1,676 pinfalls, followed by Sukma bowler Jakelyn Ng (1,580), Nerosha Kelight (1,528) and Syazwani Sajeli (1,491).
The winners received RM400, RM300, RM200 and RM100 respectively.
Sibu showed that they are a force to be reckoned with when they swept the boys and girls titles in the Piala Persatuan (Abas) for Under 15.
Christopher Tiong was the champion in the boys contest while the runner-up and third placed bowler were Kuok Tai Bing also from Sibu and Mohd Uzair.
The girl’s champion was Nadine Kong, followed by Nerosha Kelight and Jocelyn Judith Jonathan.
More than 60 bowlers participated in the four-day event, which is a prelude to the National and Inter-state Bowling Championships.
The championship held at Riverside SuperBowl and Crystal Bowl from Nov 25-28, was organised by Amateur Bowling (Tenpin) Association Sarawak (Abas).
Among the objectives of the event were to select representatives for the National and Inter-state Bowling Championships at Pyramid Mega Lanes in Kuala Lumpur next March and to foster and promote goodwill, friendship and sportsmanship among the bowling fraternity.
Four best players from each Open’s and Ladies’ categories will be selected to the state squad while the selection of youth boys and youth girls will be done by Sarawak’s chief coach Jackson Ting.
Abas president Sunny Si, vice president Saifulbahri Shukri and secretary Robert Lu gave away the prizes.