Nassau Boys Individual Bowling Championships (Leftovers)

Matt Farber put another notch in his belt Saturday, winning the Nassau individual title. This, of course, adds to what’s already been an amazing season in which he led Long Island - by a wide margin, at that - with a 244.1 average.

Winning the Nassau championship: “It’s the icing on the cake. It’s amazing to see my hard work and effort pay off.”

“I started bowling in second grade, took a year off from sixth-seventh, got back into it and haven’t stopped since. I took the time off because I was interested in other sports – baseball, hockey, soccer, basketball – so I wanted to give those some time, but I missed bowling too much.

This season: “The past couple years I’ve been taking it extremely seriously. Not taking breaks, practicing every day. I was kind of killing myself and putting too much pressure on myself. This year I’ve relaxed a little more, made myself take one day off a week to allow myself to heal physically and mentally. Then when I got on the lanes, I was 100% focused every time I threw the ball.”

Your success: “It’s unbelievable. I never thought I would bowl this well this season. I figured I’d have a 220-225 average, and be solid, but this has been a dream season.”

College: “I’m 95% sure right now that I’ll be going to Stony Brook. I want to focus on my academics in college and then hopefully take bowling to the next level independently.”

Professional bowling aspirations? “With my successes in high school, I’ve realized that I do have talent and I’d like to take it to the pros.”

Bowling the 300 in Game 4: “I’ve been in that situation before, having done it in tournaments, so I take the same approach. Whether I’m practicing or in the middle of a 300, I think of it as ‘one strike at a time.’”

Samuel Kaplan, the Roslyn senior who had a 208 average in the regular season, rolled a 1,418 series and was runner-up for the county title for the second year in a row. He didn’t seem to mind too much, though.

Finishing second: “It’s awesome! You want to win, but I’m not mad at all. I’m excited. This basically means that I get to end my high school career on a good note, being back in states.”

Thoughts on your performance: “After five games I almost had second place locked up. But I started to tense up a little in the sixth game and I didn’t make good shots early on, but at the end of the game I pulled it together and locked up second.”

Farber’s performance: “I’m not surprised he won. He’s one of the best and he showed it. He was great.”

Bryan Landini will coach the Section VIII all-star team, which will be: Farber (Plainview JFK), Samuel Kaplan (Roslyn), Jeff Rosenheck (Bethpage), Thomas Bianco (Bellmore-Merrick), Nick Mayo (Lawrence) and Tommy Genova (Sewanhaka District).

The 2012 all-star team: “We’ve got some guys who’ve been doing this for a while (been competing in states) in Sam [Kaplan], [Tommy] Genova and [Matt] Farber, and the other guys are very good – the best on their teams – so there’s good leadership all around… We expect another good showing upstate.”