From hitting bowling pins to creating dresses, the journey of a Maltese youngster has been anything but boring.

Sara Xuereb, 24, a two-time former national female bowling champion turned fashion designer, told this newsroom that her journey has been "anything but linear - though that's what has made it meaningful".

Xuereb is prominently known within local sports circles for her successes in the Maltese bowling community. Starting out as a bowling prodigy at the National Sports School, Xuereb became the youngest national bowling champion in Maltese history when she won the female category of the national bowling championships aged just 14 years old, back in 2016, before claiming another national title in 2018, aged 16. She has represented Team Malta on several occasions at youth and adult level.

But, as years passed, Xuereb has shown that she has talent in another, completely different world - fashion.

Since beginning her studies in fashion, Xuereb and her garments have appeared in highly regarded fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Glamour and Fashionista. Her work was also featured on the front cover of the Atlanta Business Chronicle, and she has since attained her Bachelor's degree.

Aside from exposure, she has already turned heads by designing special occasion outfits for athletes in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), in the United States. Xuereb designed Saniya Rivers' draft night outfit ahead of this WNBA season, and later created Allisha Gray's custom piece for All-Star weekend.

In spite of her already acclaimed bowling career, over the past year she has paused her sporting talents to pursue the final year of her fashion degree abroad and continue progressing within the fashion industry as a designer for her own brand, insync. Her brand's page has nearly 11,000 followers at the time of writing.

Xuereb told this newsroom that despite always being into fashion, she never really took it seriously "due to the lack of importance that is given to fashion and art in Malta".

"When I got the opportunity to pursue an art major at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), in the USA, I immediately thought it was the right time to pursue a literal dream since there are more opportunities in this type of sector overseas," Xuereb said.

Xuereb is grateful for every avenue she has explored and for everything she has learned along the way through her experiences. She remarked that through dance as a child, she learned how to communicate without words, through the motions of her body. Bowling took her into an entirely differently world, she said, "where discipline, strategy, and perseverance became central", which grounded her "in a way that creativity alone couldn't", before finding her way back into art and fashion more recently.

"My journey taught me that nothing is wasted. Every pivot, every passion adds dimension. I don't see my path as a series of changes, but as a layered evolution of my own self," she said.

While studying at SCAD, which she called "a top fashion university in the world", Xuereb was selected among the top 20 students from the college to showcase her full collection at a runway show.

Xuereb said she likes avant-garde style garments for photoshoots and runways, though she also enjoys making trendy clothes for everyday use and, on some occasions, much fancier gowns as well.

At the time being, she is building the foundations for her clothing brand, insync, in hopes that it can grow financially - mainly through her connections in both Malta and the United States of America.

She said her passion towards the fashion industry began like any other girl: from the fun in shopping, though she always felt that she had this artistic side within her - even before she began bowling or danced or went for drawing lessons. A few years prior to her beginning her fashion degree, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Xuereb ventured into making and selling hair scrunchies.

The Maltese youth said she's fascinated by fashion given its everyday use and by the fact that if one is skilled enough, they can create a garment out of a single flat medium. In her view, "knowing how to create garments is more than just a hobby, but a talent and technology that is learned by practice and talent like anything else".

Bowling career on pause to make her mark in the fashion industry

Xuereb decided to pause her bowling career and prioritise her fashion degree during her final year at SCAD, from where she recently graduated. While studying at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, Xuereb was also part of the college's esteemed collegiate bowling programme. Despite graduating, her bowling career remains on pause as she looks to set her footing in this industry.

"My love for bowling is still in me but I feel that the priorities that I have currently are not aligned with restarting bowling right now, since it won't finance my living both in Malta and the USA," she said.

As part of her thesis, she had to create a five-look collection which required a lot of preparation and work to finalise, including after school hours. This collection meant more than just sewing and creating garments, she said; Xuereb had to make sure her skills stood out well enough from the rest of her cohort to secure a spot at the college's annual final runway show where selected students, such as herself, had the opportunity to get noticed by big companies, recruiters, and top people within the industry in attendance.

Given all the work required to work towards this opportunity, for which she was chosen for, "showing up every day and every weekend to create this collection meant that travelling out of the state to compete in bowling was not going to work if I wanted my full potential in fashion to be shown to the public".

In addition, she added that "pursuing bowling outside of college and practising the sport consists of constant investment in yourself for the sport, unless you have a sponsor".

In June 2015, Xuereb, who at the time was aged 14, told the Times of Malta about her wish to, one day represent Malta at the Olympic Games with the hope that bowling is introduced as an Olympic sport. Looking back on her comments from a decade ago, Xuereb told this newsroom that at that particular age, adolescents feel optimistic towards best-case scenarios coming true and tend to ignore other factors and external influence on what happens around them.

"Unfortunately, bowling is still not in the Olympics and the wage of a professional player in Malta still doesn't match the wage one can have in a corporate job, so I feel that we might still be in the same place we were 10 years ago in certain areas," Xuereb said. "That leaves no other solution but have athletes juggle their corporate job and their sport, not having their full focus on sport and not knowing if their full potential can be reached."

During this interview, Xuereb was asked what she would suggest to improve the sports sector in Malta. She mentioned having more team event competitions/tournaments, training centres, giving importance to professional full-time athletes, and providing equipment/wages to national athletes and national coaches.