Surprise victory for youth girl

14th September, Singapore: The inaugural Milo-SBF Centre of Excellence Circuit 2008 came to an end at Superbowl SAFRA Mount Faber on Sunday with Grace Fung Yu Si taking victory in the 14 & Under Masters crown while Adam Lim Wee Ming emerged as 20 & Under champion.

Twenty-one bowlers qualified for the Masters in the 14 & Under division while fifteen contested the 20 & Under division. The finalists bowled a series of 6 games whereby the top 3 from each division advanced to the stepladder finals.

The girls showed that they were no pushovers in the 14 & Under division when Celine Mok topped the table at the end of 6 games. She bowled 184, 173, 138, 183, 227 and 179, which together with her 30 pins handicap, gave her a total of 1114 pinfalls.   Just 7 pins behind in second place was Grace Fung. Although she started off with a low game of 119, she made up grounds with games of 182, 144, 243, 175 and 214 ending with 1107. The only male qualifier for the stepladder finals was Leon Lee, who secured the third spot with games of 149, 189, 216, 171, 201 and 167 for a total of 1093.

In the first stepladder match between second-seed, Fung and third-seed, Lee, Fung got the better of her opponent with a 187-178 win despite missing two pin 10 in the first half of the match.

Lee missed a spare in the seventh frame which Fung capitalized on. A double and 9 pin in the final frame proved sufficient to edge out Lee, who ended with 178. In the title match against Mok, Fung maintained her composure despite a split in the third frame. She went on to end the game without anymore open frames as Mok missed spares in the fourth, sixth and ninth frames handing Fung the title. Meanwhile in the 20 & Under division, Kristel Oh topped the field of 14 with games of 234, 194, 156, 218, 170 and 202 for a total of 1174 to put her ahead of Nicholas Lim Jun Rong by 4 pins. Adam Lim, who totaled 1196, settled for 1166 after a deduction of 30 pins to finish third.

Adam and Nicholas fought it out in the first stepladder match, with Nicholas having a 5-pin handicap advantage over Adam. At the halfway mark, Nicholas was leading by 6 pins (including handicap) but Adam strung 6 strikes-in-a-row to beat Nicholas by a whopping 48 pins.

Kristel Oh got off to a lead early in the title match as Adam failed to spare 3 out of his first 5 frames. But the 17-year-old rebounded in a similar fashion shown in the earlier match by stringing 6 consecutive strikes to seal the victory, 212-179.