sport, local-sport, Jason Belmonte, Orange, Tenpin bowling, PBA, player of the year

He’s done it again. For the fourth time in the past five years, the media and his fellow competitors have voted Orange’s Jason Belmonte as the GEICO Chris Schenkel PBA player of the year. Belmonte, who rewrote the history books in 2017 by becoming the first player in PBA history to win three major championships in one year, was a landslide winner in balloting among his fellow PBA members and veteran bowling writers. At 34, he joins Mark Roth as a four-time winner of the sport’s most coveted individual award, which Belmonte will receive at the PBA 60th anniversary celebration dinners and Hall of Fame induction ceremony on February 17. Walter Ray Williams Jr is the all-time leader with seven gongs, followed the late Earl Anthony with six. “I am absolutely thrilled to be the PBA’s Player of the Year,” Belmonte said. “2017 was a really successful year for me and winning these awards just makes those successes even better. “It really motivates me to continue to push myself even harder. I want to thank all the members who voted and also thank the PBA for giving me the opportunity to bowl on the best tour in the world.” Belmonte claimed his seventh, eighth and ninth career majors by winning the PBA World Championship, the Barbasol PBA Players Championship and an unprecedented fourth United States Bowling Congress Masters title in 2017, and claimed the inaugural Storm Lucky Larsen Masters in Sweden for his fourth title. He also topped the year’s earnings list with $238,912 and broke the PBA’s average scoring record too, finishing with 229.39 across his 380 games. It was a stunning return to form for the most successful two-handed bowler in history, he labelled it somewhat of a “comeback” after a less-than-Belmonte-like year in 2016 when he failed to secure any PBA title wins. The title-less year came after winning the player of the year gong in 2013, 2014 and 2015, and Belmonte put it down to losing focus in the big moments even though, in his words, “2016 wasn’t a bad year, it was a bad year on TV because I was letting things get to me, like winning a fourth straight player of the year”. He pledged that won’t happen again in 2018. “I don’t want to have that conversation (again), that I was too busy thinking about player of the year to bowl well,” he said. “I’m not going to let myself do that. If another player has a better year than I do, it’s not going to be because I was thinking about end of year awards.”

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