PALEMBANG - The Philippine men's bowling team played above expectations but could not provide a medal for the country, as they ended up eighth in the men's team of six event on Saturday at the Jakabaring Bowling Center.
The Philippines tallied a total score of 8027, 139 pins short of bronze medal winner Chinese Taipei. "I can say that I'm a bit satisfied with their performance, being two of the six-man team are members of the youth team, and are still rookies when it comes to the Asian Games," said coach Biboy Rivera after the match.
Rivera also shared that the team was disappointed even though they played above what was expected.
" In their hearts they knew they could win," he said." Maybe there was a few jitters that prevented them from having a very good start, because we scored high in the second game and third games. But [they] really had a slow start. We need to work on that."
After the first block, the Philippines already faced an uphill battle with an eighth place ranking. The team needed to produce better results in the second block (last three games) of the contest.
Unfortunately, things were more of the same, as they hovered between seventh and eighth place in the remaining games.
"Like I said before we started we are the underdogs and we're just hoping for an upset," Rivera, a 2010 Asian Games gold medalist, pointed out. "So the teams that won, those were the ones we predicted to really perform."
Korea was head and shoulders above the competition with an 8540 score to earn gold while Hong Kong came in at second with 8175, and Chinese Taipei's score of 8166 was good enough for a bronze medal.
"Well, we did better than most teams, Singapore and Malaysia, which are going to be our contenders for next year's Southeast Asian Games. We may not have won a medal but maybe for now it's good enough for us," mentioned the former tenpin bowling world champion.
The men's and women's team still have the masters event to look forward to in the next two days.