Lovella Catalan is confident she will eventually make it to the national women's bowling team of the Philippines this year. It's a feeling that stayed with Lovella after she qualified for the training pool. Playing last March 1 and 2 against Elaine Florencio at the Green Valley Lanes in Pasig, Lovella garnered an average of 230 pinfalls. At one point her highest score was 280, almost a perfect score. Lovella became one of the very first to qualify in the training pool. She is the only Deaf bowler there.
When not bowling, Lovella is busy at the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies (DLS-CSB SDEAS) as a Trainor and Formator at the Deaf Sports Program. She is an SDEAS alumnae.
Qualifying games were also held in Visayas and Mindanao. The new qualifiers like Lovella will join other former national bowlers who automatically qualified in the training pool. From the training pool, 3 women and 3 men will be chosen by coach Josephine Canare to represent the country in the Philippine International Bowling Cup. This tournament will be held in Manila middle of this year.
Though Lovella is confident she will make it to the RP national team, she is not confident about winning in the coming tournament. This is partly because she is not comfortable with the bowling lanes in Mall of Asia, where the tournament will be held.
Another reason, she points out, is the presence of strong Korean women bowlers. And lastly, she has not 100% recovered from the shoulder injury she sustained in 2005.
But with the way she played in the qualifiers, it's hard to think she is injured. Her scores speak for themselves and they say Lovella's chances of winning are as good as anyone else's.
