Safiyah enhancing skills, team bonding in 'pandemic break'

KUALA LUMPUR, July 17 – National kegler Siti Safiyah Amirah Abdul Rahman wants to use the unplanned ‘pandemic break’ to work on skill enhancements and team bonding.

With no major assignments in sight till the Asian Championships in Hong Kong, which was postponed to Jan 15-25 next year from July 4-14, the 29-year-old believes it is time for self-improvement.

 “For now there are no tournaments lined up in the immediate future. We can use this period to improve our accuracy and consistency. In my case, I need to focus on speed, release and many other areas which require improvement.

“We also have more time for team bonding and talk with the coach about our game,” she told Bernama.

Siti Safiyah and the national team’s last outing was the 2019 SEA Games in Manila, where she won three silver medals – in masters, mixed doubles with Ahmad Muaz Fishol and women’s team of four.

The former world champion is now slowly gaining back her fire in the lanes by polishing her rusty skills after over three months of absence from the alley due to the Movement Control Order (MCO) to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although feeling stilted in the initial phase of training, Siti Safiyah, who is known as Sofy, is now more confident with her bowling.

She said it felt like her fingers had shrunk after skipping training for almost three months.

“Maybe after another one or two weeks of training I will be okay,” she said.

-- BERNAMA