By ADEM SARICAOGLU
HAVE you ever trundled down to the local bowling alley and bowled a perfect game?
Paul White has done it not once, not twice, but thrice – and he’s still only 19-years-old.
The Seabrook student seems to live the normal life typical of a young man his age.
By day he’s either studying business and accounting at RMIT or working to earn his keep, and in his downtime you may find him at Wyncity Bowl working on his pursuit of a fourth perfect game.
But White’s three glorious days on the alley weren’t quite flukes.
After all, he is one of the country’s top young guns of the tenpin bowling scene, and recently he came back from Perth’s Australian Youth Championship with a bounty of items worth adding to his sporting CV.
White won the men’s championship over Singaporean top qualifier Brandon Tan with a match play average of 205.77.
Days later he went on to claim two more silver medals for the doubles event and the male all events competition.
“Really, I don’t think I could have done much better, to be honest,” White told Star.
“I bowled the best I possibly could and really, just focusing on the process got me the results, so I’m really happy with how the week went.”
His efforts also saw him named in the all-star team and he was voted by his peers as the ‘sportsperson of the championships’.
That long list of achievements in a single week is just reward for the dedication White puts into his craft.
If the mood is right, a single practise session at Wyncity can last up to two and a half hours.
But if White’s not at the alley practising knocking over dozens of different spares, he’ll be in the gym, working on the stamina required for high-level competition.
“I do gym workouts and I try to get in there once or twice a week for full body workouts and general workouts,” White explained.
“That’s just to keep my general fitness up, but also two or three times a week I’m at the bowling centre just practising spares, working on techniques and other things that I need to work on, and in general just getting everything to be as consistent as I can.”
White admits juggling his study, work and bowling commitments does become “hectic” during the university semester, but says he copes well with the workload.
“I do the same as what people do playing footy and cricket,” he said.
“I train two or three nights a week and do competitions on the weekend, and really it’s just about being organised.”
For now White has his sights set on making the Australian team that will compete in Hong Kong later this year, but also dreams of one day going professional in the United States.
