Aussies Bring Home Silver & Bronze
By Chris Rushton
The World Youth Championships have concluded in Detroit, USA and Australia has returned home with Silver and Bronze from the pinnacle youth tournament in the world.
It started for the Australian’s on day four, when Blayne Fletcher and Jayden Panella kick started the campaign winning Silver in the doubles event, with Emma Williamson wrapping up the campaign taking Bronze in the Masters on the final day of competition.
After placing outside of the top 40 in the singles, both Panella and Fletcher came into the doubles event looking for improvement. Following six games of qualifying the Australian pair moved into second place and 80 pins behind leaders Jaehyon Han and Geun Ji of Korea. In the semi-final Fletcher and Panella defeated the Swedish pair of William Svensson and Emanuel Jonsson 422-416 to advance to the final against fellow Swedes, Robert Lindberg and Alfred Berggren. With the Gold medal on the line, the Australians put up a fight going down to the Swedish pair 479-383 to win Silver and Australia’s first at the 2018 tournament.
After finishing 17th in the singles, 5th in the doubles with Chloe Jones after falling short of the medal rounds by 19 pins and 9th in the teams, Emma Williamson sat in 15th in the All Events standings, to qualify for the Masters.
In Stage one of the finals Williamson defeated Alida Molander of Sweden, 2 matches to 1 to progress to Stage 2. For the next two matches the Victorian drew American Breanna Clemmer winning 222-174 and 236-181. With Sunhwa Hong of Korea standing in Williamsons’ way of qualifying for the medal rounds, Williamson took the first match 193-177 but went down in match two, 214-172 to push both bowlers into a tiebreaker. With it all on the line Williamson iced match 3 winning 227-168 to progress to the semi’s against Hyeonji Son of Korea.
In semi-final two, Williamson had to defeat the Korea to move into the gold medal match. After winning the first match 179-171, Willamson was on top but a 169 game to Son’s 227 saw it go into a third match where Son narrowly edged out the Australian 192-189 and see Willamson claim the Bronze medal and end Australia’s successful 2018 World Youth campaign.
For all the final standings visit http://2018wyc.worldbowling.org/results/
