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The week's news in less than a minute

6/30/2019

It looks like summer has finally arrived and we have some proper lawn bowling weather. It’s too nice to be sitting at my computer so this week you are going to get all the news that I’m aware of in less than a minute.

Nan Hendren and Bill Arthur placed second in a mixed pairs at Campbellford on Monday with 3 wins

In the same tournament Bob Bates and Pat Bylok were third as the two game high winners.

On Wednesday, Nan Hendren, Kathleen Shirley and Louisa Arthur were acclaimed as the District 14 senior ladies triples champions and will play in the Ontario championships in Windsor on July 9/10

Bob Bates, Carl Ferguson and I came second in the District 14 senior men’s triples (OK the truth is there were only two teams and we lost to an Oshawa team in the best of 3 games)

Another good turnout for the Wednesday night free lesson sessions but so far this has only turned into 4 new members

No joy for Baylee van Steijn and Nancy Fargo in the Ontario ladies pairs championship on Saturday, losing two games and in a double knockout format that was the end of the road for them. Reports suggest a tough draw for them and Baylee says that she is proud of their performance.

Martin Foxhall was playing in the men’s pairs representing District 9 with Erik Galipeau but they suffered the same fate as Baylee and Nancy.

Don’t forget – if you have news you want others to know about, please let me know.

Happy Canada Day

Bill

SUNDAY BOWLING NEWS

6/23/2019

We finally got some decent weather this week and from a personal point of view the only disappointment was the cancellation of a tournament in Oshawa on Thursday because of rain. Well actually there was another disappointment and that was in the men’s pairs where Bob Bates and I only won one of three games, but hey ho that’s the way it goes sometimes. The lawn bowling Gods can be very fickle at times.

Tuesday night we had a very good turnout for the jitney and Ralph Stoffers, playing with Al Gourd consolidated his position at the top of the jitney standings.

We had a great turnout once again for our new bowler evenings on Wednesday with 22 players. This coming Wednesday is the final week and hopefully we will see some of the visitors sign up as members. We are already ahead of last year’s numbers so things are looking good.

Congratulations the team of Nan Hendren, Dave Shirley and Kathleen Shirley who won a mixed triples tournament at Whitby on Wednesday. Well done guys. Photo courtesy of Whitby LBC. They've cut off my head said Dave!

Do you ever wish you could be a better bowler? I’m sure all of us wish that and the way you can become better is to practise. And we can help you with that. Most Friday afternoons the greens are free for practice and sometime between 2.00 pm and 5.00 pm you can find me at the club practising and available to help you if you wish.

It was good to see several members at the club watching the men’s pairs on Saturday. When playing in an event it is encouraging to have support from the veranda and one of the big benefits of your membership is to sit on the veranda watch some fine bowling and enjoy the best view in Cobourg looking out over the park and the lake.

On Saturday Baylee van Steijn was playing in the Ontario Singles Championships at Agincourt. She had a tough draw and in her first game had to play the reigning Canadian singles champion, Cathy Larking from Cosburn Park. In a tight match she lost out to Cathy 21-19. She bounced back to win her second game 21-7 but then lost her third game. As the format was double knock out that was the end of the road for Baylee but her time will come.

In the James Gordon Insurance Men’s Pairs which I have already referred to the top Cobourg team was Dave Shirley and John Hawryszko who were the two game high winners with 42+1 points. (I din't cut off his head as you will seen on the photos page. In second place as a substitute for game 3 was Bill Bickle! Robert and David Steffen from Oshawa were playing together but at the end of the second game David injured his back and could not continue. Bill Bickle stood in for him and played very well to help Robert to another win and second place.

The ParticipAction Community Better challenge has now finished and nationally Canadians tracked just over 263 million minutes. We tracked all club activity throughout the two week period and totalled 40,080 minutes. A big thanks to Vice President Nancy Fargo and Director Mike Place for organising this. It will be repeated again next year and if you have downloaded the App you can continue to track your daily activity.

Enjoy your week. It's nearly Canada Day and still time to sign up for the club tournament. This is always a fun day.

Bill

Bowls, Wind and Rain

6/16/2019

Before talking about last week’s events a couple of things to catch up on from the previous news update. Apologies for the confusion around the cut throat scores - these have now been corrected. Also the scores for the youth tournament that took place last Sunday are now on the open tournament page.

So, on to this week.

We had a bad start to the week with another wet day on Monday and no bowling but thankfully Tuesday was better and we had a good turnout for the Tuesday night jitney.

On Wednesday Carol Dewey and I were interviewed on 89.7 FM to plug our Wednesday night lessons and the Open House. If you missed it and want to listen follow this link

https://northumberland897.ca/midweek-warmup/2019/6/12/mid-week-warmup-june-12

The additional advertising we did this year certainly paid off with 18 potential new bowlers turning up on Wednesday night and hopefully they will be back again this week and we can sign up some new members. On the other hand the Open House on Saturday was not successful with very few people turning up. I think this was a combination of cold weather and the Highland Games in Victoria Park. We will have to re-think the date for next year.

Despite the weather forecast for Thursday we managed to complete the coaching clinic on Weight and Line on Thursday morning. We had eleven attendees and three visitors from Brighton. Immediate feedback was good but if anyone has further comments to make about it (good or bad) please leave a comment on this page, let me have verbal feedback or send me an email.
If you were unable to attend but would like some coaching please let Nan Hendren or I know and we can arrange to help you.

Feedback on any club matter is always welcome. If there is something that we are doing well we need to know about it and at the same time we need to know about things that need to be improved/changed.

As I have already said the Open House on Saturday was not what we would have liked but there were other club successes on Saturday.

Firstly, the ladies pairs team of Baylee van Steijn and Nancy Fargo qualified for the Ontario Pairs Championships which will be held on June 29/30. They had to play a Lindsay team in the best of three games and did it the hard way. Game One they won in an extra end; game two they lost; game three they won quite easily. Good luck to them in the Provincials. Baylee will also be playing in the Ontario Singles Championships in Agincourt next weekend.

No such luck for Bob Bates and me in the men’s pairs. In a four team round robin we won our first game and tied our second game before having to play Rob and David Steffen from Oshawa. For the benefit of those who don’t know, Rob and David were the 2107 Canadian Champions and although we tied with them in the playdowns last year we were well beaten this time out. We finished second but that is not good enough to qualify for the Provincials.

Also on Saturday eight of our short mat bowlers travelled to Stirling to help them with their inaugural short mat day. Unlike most clubs which do short mat in the winter, the Stirling Club plays at the Curling Rink during the summer. Last year they purchased eight new mats after receiving a Horizons For Seniors grant and we will be borrowing some of their mats for the Canadian Short Mat Bowling Association National Championships which we are hosting at the Cobourg Community Centre in November. Short Mat Bowling is a great way to keep your hand in during the winter and I will tell you more about it when the season is about to start.

Photos courtesy of Donna Longman. The two ladies with Ralph Hewitt are Judy Steinke and June Hickman from Kingston and part of Team Canada at the 2018 World Championships.

Whilst club news is always posted on here and sent to you via email it is often more convenient and instantaneous to give a quick update on Twitter and/or Facebook. You don’t have to have an account to view these, although if you do you will get immediate updates. But you can just click on the relevant icon on the home page of the website.

Finally just a reminder that we will host the Ontario U18 Championships on July 6/7 and will need volunteers for jobs over those two days. I will write to you shortly about the areas where we need volunteers so if you’re not doing anything on those days please leave your calendar free!

Have a great bowling week.

Bill

That was the bowling week that was

6/9/2019

Monday

It was cold (no change there) but the Monday Night Leaguers were out doing all the different things that Donna Ball dreams up. Placing the jacks in different positions and only scoring if you got within the specified distance from the jack. We started at 3 feet and gradually moved down to one foot. It’s good to have so many people playing in this league. I’m not sure what the numbers were but I think we had eight rinks in play.

Tuesday

It rained!

Wednesday

The first of the free lesson nights. It rained! Amazingly one lady came and she had personal attention as she was told all about bowling. I did demonstrate some aspects of the game on the green but it really was too wet for the lady to go out. Such a pity since the Wednesday night sessions are our major recruitment initiative. Thankfully this week looks better.

Success for Baylee van Steijn and Martin Foxhall who won a mixed pairs tournament in Peterborough.

Photo is courtesy of Peterborough LBC

Thursday

Summer arrived and we had a club tournament. 24 members competed in an 8 team triples tournament. We played two 12 end games and I heard some positive comments about the 10.00 am start from those who struggle to get out of bed in the mornings! The winning team of Janet Taylor, Norma Stoffers and Arnold Bowman finished on the same number of points as my team ( I had Ralph Stoffers and Bonnie Sheridan with me) but they had one plus point more than we did. Congratulations to them.

Friday and Saturday

The first day of play in the Ontario Fours Championships. We did not have any ladies teams competing but Bob Bates, Ben van Steijn, John MacKenzie (Oshawa) and I were competing. There were twenty men’s teams and we were split into four groups of five teams for round robin play. The top two teams in each group qualified for the quarter finals which would be elimination games.

We got off to a good start, winning our first game 15-13. We were tied coming home in the second game but lost 13-15. Third game was a similar story and we lost 14-15. This meant that we had to win our final game and hope that other results went our way. Going into that last game we knew that if we won we would be in a tie breaker for second place and we did win by 13-9. Unfortunately though we lost our 4 end tie breaker.

Martin Foxhall was also playing with his regular teammates from other clubs but they could not repeat their success of previous seasons and were eliminated after the round robin stage.

The competition was so great and teams were so evenly matched that three of the groups needed tie breakers and in one of those groups all five teams finished with 6 points which meant a five way tie breaker!

Club Cut Throat

On Saturday the club cut throat tournament, jointly sponsored by Amplifon and On Site Computer Services and Sales, was held. Obviously I wasn’t here but it sounds as though it was a good tournament which was won by Dave Shirley. I was pleased to see that some of the newer bowlers were competing.

Sunday

As I write this a Youth tournament is being played at the club but I don’t yet have the results. I’ll cover that next week.
Good Bowling

Bill

A Cold and Soggy May!

6/3/2019

Its not exactly been lawn bowling weather so far has it? Let’s hope for some better weather in June because there is a lot happening.

Our opening day went pretty well and it was great to have a good attendance for the opening ceremonies with Mayor John Henderson and Councillor Emily Chorley who beat the Mayor’s opening bowl!

Our first open tournament on Victoria Day also went well but it was cold that day with a strong wind blowing. The Peterborough team of Bob Reynolds, Wayne Skivington, Larry Brown and Glen Gray really took everyone else to the cleaners with an amazing score of 54+8. As usual Lauria Hyundai had a vehicle on display but not once (in my hearing) did anyone say “Is that the prize”?

No luck with our opening club tournament, the Coach’s Cup. We tried but the rain and the cold just became too much and we had to abandon it after one game. We will try again later in the season.

I haven’t managed a jitney yet (apart from the opening day) – the evenings have been too cold for my liking but it’s good to see that some of you have been out braving the cold. On his return to bowling after a year’s sabbatical Ralph Stoffers has gone straight into the lead in the jitney standings. I keep the results and award 3 points to the winning team, 2 to second and 1 to third. It’s just a fun thing. Sometimes I ignore the results because the full name is not shown. Which Donna? Longman or Ball? Which Ralph? Stoffers or Hewitt? Any way you get my drift. I’m not a mind reader so to make sure you get your results recorded make sure the jitney card shows the full name. I will post the full May results on the bulletin board in the club house.

We had an excellent coaching session “Introduction to Competition” from Mary Lou Richardson during May. She really is an excellent coach and her enthusiasm is catching. We have a club coaching session lined up for June 13th which is aimed at all club bowlers and hopefully we will get a good turnout for that.

It was good to see several of you out practising on Friday afternoon. If you want to get better practice is the answer. Friday afternoons are always free on the greens so it’s an ideal time to come out. If you would like some individual tuition let me or Nan Hendren know and we will try to help.

I have to give great credit to Mike Hendren and Carl Ferguson ( and their helpers) for the condition of the greens so early in the season. If you only ever play in Cobourg you probably do not realise how good they are compared with some other clubs. They do a wonderful job even though they sometimes set the sprinklers on automatic and they come on unexpectedly if you are practising! We have enough with the rain without being soaked by sprinklers.
On the subject of playing at other clubs do let me know if you get in the prize money at other clubs so that we can let others in the club know how rich you are ( I’m talking to you Bob Bates). Seriously it is good to know about outside results so do let me know of your successes.

You have hopefully noticed that the club is participating in the ParticipACTION Community Better challenge. This started o May 31st and runs to June 15th. During that period we will be keeping track of the number of people who keep active by lawn bowling at our club and will report the results to ParticipACTION. W received a grant of $500 from them to promote our activities during the first part of June and have used this to take out quarter page adverts in Northumberland News and radio adverts on Northumberland 89.7 about our free bowler evenings and our open house. ParticipACTION also has a free App available for download on your phone or tablet that allows you to record your daily activity, not just during the period of the Community Better Challenge but at all times. I’m using it to record my activities and I even won a prize for using it, a $10 Amazon gift card. Just go to the App store (Apple) or Playstore (Android) and search for ParticipAction. It’s free.

Good Bowling
Bill Arthur

The week's news in less than a minute

SUNDAY BOWLING NEWS

Bowls, Wind and Rain

That was the bowling week that was

A Cold and Soggy May!

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