Saturday, June 08, 2013

Daria "Dasha" Kovalova


image source: Wichita State Bowling
 
Continuing on my quest to find competitive women's bowling outside the United States, this week's profile was a Wichita State teammate of last week's profile, Jazreel Tan. Her name is Daria Kovalova (also known as Dasha) from Ukraine.

For those of you not familiar with college bowling, Wichita State is to bowling as Kansas is to basketball, a perennial powerhouse. Current PBA bowlers Chris Barnes and Sean Rash are former Wichita State Shockers.

Three of the four finalists in the 2013 Women's Intercollegiate Bowling Championships video I included in last week's blog entry were from Wichita State: Jazreel Tan, Tannya Roumimper, and Dasha.

Like Jazreel, Dasha has captured a few bowling titles outside of Wichita State. In 2011, Dasha won the Girls Singles and All-Events European Youth Championship and in 2012 defeated Birgit Poppler in the Women's European Champions Cup (see November 4, 2012 blog entry or YouTube video below).



As Dasha is only a freshman, she's got a very bright future ahead of her. It's really a shame there's hasn't been a full women's tour since 2003. I have no doubt bowlers like Shayna Ng, Jazreel Tan and Dasha would be a big part of it.

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