Dubai: The Dubai Filipino Bowling Club (DFBC) took top honours at the inaugural World Overseas Filipino Bowling Tour that concluded at the Dubai International Bowling Centre earlier this week.
The Dubai club’s teams — both in the ladies’ and men’s categories — established themselves as favourites from the opening day with their first gold medal coming in the Ladies’ Singles event through Uella Marcial. Clarisse Corpuz and Ricky Reyes won bronze in the women’s and men’s singles respectively to further consolidate the strong start by the hosts.
The overall championship became a certainty on the second day of the competition when both the DFBC-A men’s and ladies’ teams bagged gold in the team event, pulling away with 32 points overall and with two more events to compete on the final day.
The World Overseas Filipino Bowling Tour was hosted by Dubai Filipino Bowling Club with sponsorship from Dante’s Peak, Megaworld International, Land Bank of the Philippines, Genesis X’tranol-24 of Symmetry Gulf, and Me. Ben Descargar of Grandweld Dubai.
Twelve bowling clubs from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and the UAE took part in the three-day competition.
The tournament marks a start for international bowling competitions for Filipinos working overseas worldwide. The next tour will be hosted by the Southeast Asian Overseas Filipino Bowlers and various clubs from Europe, Canada, USA, Australasia and the Far East have expressed interest in participating.
In the team event, the top three positions in the ladies’ competitions were won by DFBC’s Uella Marcial, Clarisse Corpuz and Myra Aviles. Ricky Reyes added a second Bronze in the men’s event.
Hashim Guinomla of DFBC took home the highest individual prize in the men’s category, the gold in the Masters, after trouncing the experienced Anthony Balabbo of Filbowler-Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia.
Guinomla showed his prowess when he finished the competition strongly after the eight-game round in the Masters event despite struggling in the earlier games.
