Dawson Creek youth bowlers bring home gold at Nationals

DAWSON CREEK, B.C. – Two youth bowlers from Dawson Creek arrived home last week and brought home some hardware from the Youth Bowl Canada National Championships in Oshawa, Ontario.

Hunter Kropp and Caleb Waller earned two goal medals at the championships — the first being in the five-pin bantam mixed team competition.

“That was our first gold medal we won,” said coach Kari Myers.

After being sixth seed following round-robin play in bantam boys’ doubles, the duo put together two wins to make it into the medal bracket after losing the first playoff game.

The pair then beat Quebec and Southern Ontario to move on to the gold medal match.

The duo ended up beating Alberta in a very close game to take home the gold.

In the very last frame, Myers says if the other player had hit a single pin, they would’ve lost, but he missed.

She says at that point, Kropp jumped three feet into the air.

“There were a lot of tears. There were a lot of happy emotions,” Myers said.

On the way home, she recounted a conversation in the Vancouver airport she had with the boys and their family members.

“I’m like, ‘I knew I could coach this team cause I’ve been doing it for a long time, but I never, ever in a million years thought I could coach them to a gold medal,’ and they’re like, ‘well, you did it,'” she explained.

The coach added that she had never coached a team that made it to nationals before, let alone one that ended up being the top bantam team in Canada.

Only two other teams from Dawson Creek had gone to nationals but had never won before, according to Myers.

Kropp, Waller earned a spot on Team B.C. after taking the provincial bantam boys title in Surrey earlier this year.