The Ontario Under 18s championship was held at Kingston on June 28th and 29th and we had two entrants in the boys tournament, Will Richardson and Ben Van Steijn. Baylee Van Steijn competed in the girls tournament. The first three in each category would qualify for the Canadian junior championship.

In the girls section Baylee  finished fourth and brother Ben finished sixth in his category. However,  the real success was Will Richardson who bowled very well all weekend to take the silver medal. Will lost only one of nine round robin matches  to qualify for the gold medal round. In a very close game he lost in a tie breaker to Adam McKerihen of the James Park club in Toronto but his silver medal was just reward for some excellent bowling. The bronze medal was taken by Lucas Caldwell of the Peterborough club. Will is pictured with Andy Caldwell, the Ontario Lawn Bowling Association Director for junior bowling.

This was an especially good performance from Will who was playing in the provincial championships for the very first time. He now goes on to represent Cobourg and Ontario at the Canadian national championships in August.

Congratulations to all three juniors for some great bowling  but especially to Will.

I can’t give a personal report on the cut throat tournament sponsored by Rona Cashway but I have all the scorecards and can let you know how the tournament unfolded.

After the first round Eve Gorringe was in the lead with 48 points, followed by Bernice Klassen (45) and Dianne Lauder (43). But as we know from past tournaments a high score in the first round is no guarantee of success, unless of course you can maintain the same level of performance in the next round. And that is exactly what Eve did with an excellent 55 points giving her a cumulative score of 103 points.

At that stage the Shirleys had moved into second and third places with 87 points for Kathleen and 83 for Dave. Those three played  against one another in the third round and Eve maintained her form to win again with 36 points and  a total of 139.

In the third round Ralph Stoffers, who was lying in sixth place after two rounds, scored 46 points which took him into second place relegating Kathleen and Dave to 3rd and 4th respectively. Heckie Langford and Pat Andersen shared fifth place with 110 points.

Congratulations to Eve.

There are some more photos on the Photos page and thanks to Ralph for these.

It has been a busy week with two tournaments, new bowler evening and various property improvements.

The men’s washroom refurbishment is ongoing. Unfortunately it is taking longer than expected and we don’t have a completion date yet but are doing our utmost to get the work finished as soon as possible.

We also have  a new fridge now (as you will have noticed if you’ve been in the clubhouse recently) – it should be installed next week once the old fridge is removed.

This morning all the bulbs in the floodlights have been replaced and the lamps all cleaned. This should make things better for evening events. The true test will come when it gets dark and they are switched on! There are some photos on the photos page to give an idea of what was involved in doing that work.

We had a good men’s pairs tournament on Saturday. Eighteen teams competed with  strong contingents from Oshawa, Whitby, Peterborough, Port Hope and even from Wisconsin, as Steve Nelson, a team USA player, partnered with the District Chair Rick Tompkins. There were also 5 teams from our club.

Jim Gordon is  a past President of our club and it was great to welcome back Jim and his wife Ruth as sponsor of this tournament  for the 23rd  year.

Last year’s winners, Norm Smith and Bob Matthews of Peterborough returned to defend the trophy but in a really close contest they lost out by one point to Frank Mayall and Ron Adams of Whitby. Both teams finished the tournament with a perfect 3 wins but Mayall accumulated 44 points throughout the day to Smith’s 43.

The leading Cobourg team was that of Roy Thorneycroft and Vince Tamburello (pictured right) – they finished in fifth place with 2 wins and 42 Points. After losing their first game they claimed the notable scalp of Nelson in the second round beating him by 14-12 and then won their final game 18-12. Congratulations to them.

Full results are available on the results page and some more photos on the Photos page.

Martin Foxhall was competing with District 11 colleagues in The Provincial Fours at the weekend. Unfortunately they could not repeat their gold medal win from last year and they finished in the Bronze medal position

Finally OLBA E bulletin #9 is available if you click here.

It rained today!

Nonetheless we completed our in club tournament sponsored by (appropriately) Spectacular Water Systems The really heavy rain came down just as we were finishing but it didn't deter those determined members who braved the conditions.

Congratulations to the winners, Dianne Lauder and Mary Thibault. A full report and results will follow in the next couple of days. (I have to find time to watch some soccer and golf!)

It rained yesterday!

It was free lessons for beginners evening. We did have some new people and managed about 45 minutes before the rain started again. The south green was saturated from the heavy rain earlier in the day but the conditions did attract a couple of unexpected visitors.

The juniors took center stage at the club today with an open triples tournament. Junior bowlers from Lindsay, Midland, Kitchener and Cobourg competed in the tournament which was sponsored by Cobourg Buy & Sell.  The two favourites for the tournament were the teams skipped by our own Ben Van Steijn (playing with Will Richardson and Hilary Groves) and Graydon Wood of Midland. Graydon’s team had a last minute change when their lead dropped out but Keiran McFarlane of Cobourg stepped in.


Each team played 3 games of 10 ends and after their second round games there was nothing between Ben's team and Graydon's  with 2 wins each and both had 25 points. In a very close contest Ben's team were one point behind going into the final end and at one stage in that end had four bowls scoring which would have given them the game. However Graydon reduced that to one point and in an effort to secure the second point that he needed Ben had an unlucky deflection of the jack that led to Graydon winning the end.

Baylee Van Steijn, playing with Erika Groves and Owen Kirby of Kitchener came third.  All in all though a good day for the Cobourg juniors as the six players competing finished in the top three. 


Full results and photos of the winners are on the respective pages. Also a short slide show of some photos taken during the tournament is below.

What a great tournament we had on Saturday. Fourteen teams competed in an open mixed pairs tournament sponsored by we-fix-u physiotherapy and foot care. With seven teams from our club there were high hopes of a local win. However, despite some good performances none of the Cobourg teams were in the prizes. The best performance by a home team came from Jo and Dave Carleton with 2 wins and 37 points which placed them fifth overall. Peter Kurita and Jean Livingston also had 2 wins with 34 points.

I won’t bore you with the story of how Louisa and I came back from 0-13 after 7 ends of our first game to win 17-13 but it’s a story I would be happy to regale you with any time you want!

Last year’s winners Al Handlechner and Jan Young from Peterborough were the defending champions and after two games were one of four teams still in the hunt for the trophy. However a 10-6 loss to the Port Hope team of Stan and Sheryl Zuly in the third and final game meant they relinquished the trophy to another Peterborough team -  Norm and Mary Smith. The Smiths defeated Ted and Sharron Morrison of Oshawa in their final game to finish with a perfect 3 wins and 41 points.

Thanks to all the volunteers yesterday. There is a lot of work that goes into preparing for and running a tournament and the slideshow below gives some idea of that.