On Sunday we held the singles tournaments. As in past years the entries were low with only 6 ladies and 4 men. It would be good to see more members entering for this and I wonder what we might do to increase participation. If you have any ideas then please let me know.

Despite the low numbers we still had a good day with some excellent bowling. Norma Stoffers retained her ladies title and Ann Tough was second. I won the mens and Ralph Stoffers was second (reverse positions from last year!)

Ben Van Steijn and Will Richardson played together at Peterborough on Sunday and were second. Baylee was playing with a partner from Kitchener and was one point behind them in third place. all in all a good weekend for the juniors.

Opens and in club results pages and photo page have been updated

The juniors took centre stage on Saturday  as the club hosted an open junior tournament sponsored by MVP Sports.

There was a strong field from Cobourg as well as from Uxbridge, Lindsay, Peterborough, Kitchener and Oshawa. Players were split into two age groups. In the A group (the older players) we had high hopes of Ben Van Steijn who  won the Oshawa Hunter trophy last week to take him to the top of the Ontario Bowler of the Year standings by one point and another win would keep him ahead of Alex LeBlanc of Uxbridge who is the current Canadian under 25 champion and who was also competing. Each player played three games of 4-3-2-1 and after two games LeBlanc was out of contention for the main placings. Ben, on the other hand, was leading and I was pleased to be marking his final game against Quincy Garry from Uxbridge and Dara Killoran who at that point was sitting third overall. I was of course unbiased! (but was quietly rooting for Ben and Dara). Quincy was the top points scorer in that game and although Ben did not win he scored enough points to claim top spot with 131 points. In second place with 126 points was Will Richardson, of Cobourg and the third place was taken by Quincy Garry from Uxbridge. Dara finished in 8th spot and Baylee Van Steijn finished 5th.

In Group B Matt Brien of Lindsay took the honours with 116 points followed by Jake Masterson of Peterborough with 109 points. We were well represented in this group as Corby Fisher took third place with 99 points. Three other Cobourg juniors did well with Hilary Groves  in fifth place and  Emily Mock and Sophie Robb were in the top ten.

All in all a great day for the juniors as you can see from this slideshow:.

The Juniors take centre stage this coming weekend with the MVP sponsored open tournament. Some of the Cobourg members warmed up for this last weekend in the Oshawa Hunter tournament.

Ben Van Steijn was the singles winner in that tournament which gives him another 10 points in the junior bowler of the year standings and takes him to the top of the standings. Ben is pictured with the trophy.

Baylee Van Steijn and Amanda Goodall  placed third in the pairs and Danielle Goodall  placed 6th out of 11 entries in the 4-3-2-1 category.

Lets hope they all do as well, if not better, this weekend.  You can check all the Bowler of the Year standings by following this link.

On Wednesday night Peter Kurita put on a course for new skips and vices. This was also open to any member who wanted to attend to find out more about rules and strategy.  Ten members attended. It was good to see a couple of new bowlers and also some who had previously attended this course but came to brush up their knowledge. I was disappointed that so few members did attend as I think it is a good idea to remind ourselves from time to time about how the game should be played and the current rules. I would encourage everybody to consider attending the next time one of these courses is offered.

The latest edition of the OLBA’s E Bulletin is available on their site. Just click here to see it.

Vince Tamburello and Julie Schillaci were the winners of the novices tournament today and congratulations to them. They had 3 wins and 27 points. In their final game they played Norma Stoffers and George Lawrence who were ahead of them on points but an 8-5 win for Vince and Julie relegated Norma and George to third place allowing Ralph Stoffers and June Bowman to overtake them. Ralph and June finished with 3 wins and 22 points. Norma and George finished with 2 wins and 27 points.

It was an eventful weather day and after a deluge and thunderstorm around lunchtime it looked as though we may not get the tournament completed but the rain did relent.

I don't expect many of you will know anything about cricket but english summer cricket matches are often reported with the phrase "rain stopped play" and this photo reflects that phrase very accurately. Despite the puddles, once the rain stopped this end was completed before the teams moved to another green. Your correspondent's wife was particularly keen to complete it as she was two up at the time!

Full results are on the results page and you will find more photos on the photos page.

Ralph Stoffers and I teamed up with Stan Zuly again yesterday to compete in the District Novices playdowns and I’m pleased to say that we won and will now move on to the Ontario Novices Championship in Woodstock. However, we did it the difficult way!

The tournament was held at Lindsay and we had competition from teams from Pickering and Oshawa.

Our first game was against the Pickering team and we got off to a terrible start. The games were 14 ends and after 6 ends we were down 1-10. However we stuck in and gradually clawed back to 10-12 at the start of the 13th. Sitting one we then had an unlucky shot which not only displaced our shot bowl but gave the opposition two! So we were four down going into the last end. After a see-saw end we were sitting three when Ralph had his final shot and he made a lovely draw to secure four points and force an extra end in which we scored two. Nerves were already shredded!

We had a break whilst we watched the Pickering/Oshawa game. That was won by Oshawa and meant that Pickering was out of the tournament. The winner of our game against Oshawa would take the title.

We played much better against Oshawa and were always in control, leading 16-6 with two ends to play. Then we nearly threw it away. We played an unbelievably ugly end and gave up seven! So the nerves were stretched again as we took a three point lead into the last end. With some good early bowls we took control and although Oshawa did manage to get shot bowl we were able to keep them at bay and take the win.

We now move on to the Ontario Novice championship next month.

At the last open tournament we nearly had a Cobourg winner when Ann and Bob Tough placed second. On Thursday in the Scotiabank mixed triples we finally did have a Cobourg winner when Ralph and Norma Stoffers, playing with Ron Covert took the trophy.

It turned out to be a long day. There were three games of 12 ends and play started late because of the closure of the 401 but eventually we got underway with 16 teams competing for the trophy. The Peterborough team of Norm Smith, Al Handlechner and Mary Smith was the favourite having already won several Cobourg tournaments this season. However Ralph’s team came out on top this time.


After two games Ralph’s team was the top scorer with 2 wins and 35 points, followed by Port Hope’s Ned Town with 2 wins and 30 points. That would be the top game in the final round but Donna McKracken’s team from Pickering and Norm Smith’s Peterborough team were also in contention each having won two games with 30 and 26 points respectively.

The Stoffers/Town game was very tight with Ralph prevailing to win 12-11 giving his team a total of 47 points.  Norm Smith’s team beat Donna McKracken’s team 15-8 but Smith’s total of 41 points was not enough to overtake Ralph’s team in a well earned victory.

Full results are on the results page.

Thanks to all the Cobourg teams who helped to make it another successful tournament. Thanks also to the kitchen staff, Dave and Judy Hickey with Harry Knapper and Helen Beaton. Also to Gerry Childs for once again providing first aid cover.  And finally to Agnes Hendry  who does such a good job in raising money for the club by running the 50/50 draw at all the tournaments.

Another busy week has gone by and from a personal point of view the highlight was the Ontario Seniors championship playing with Ralph Stoffers and Stan Zuly. We had a great time in Sarnia, did pretty well and overall it was a wonderful experience and one that I hope we can repeat. We had  a great team of cheer leaders with us in Louisa, Norma and Sheryl.

There are 16 districts in Ontario and  the format was double knock out which meant that after two losses you would be out of the championship. So our first objective was to win the first game. That would ensure we would get to play at least three games.

The first game was  very  tight and it could have gone either way. Games were 14 ends and going into the final end we were one down and at one stage in the end we were two down however we recovered to score three and win 14-12 so the first objective was achieved.

Our second game was against the team who would win the silver medal. We played well but lost 4-14 although the score did not reflect our overall standard of play. This meant we had no chance of the gold medal and would drop into the B pool but still with a chance to win silver and qualify for the  Canadian championships.

In the third game we won 13-8. The key moment was an end in which we scored 5. So our second objective was achieved in that we had two wins so would still be playing on the second day. Eight teams would go home after the first day. On Day two The two three game winners would contest the gold medal and we would be one of six teams competing for silver.

On the second day we had to win the next two games to get into the game for silver. However we came up against the 2012 champions who had an excellent skip  in Glen Patton who is an ex Team Canada player and who could do no wrong. Every time we got into a scoring position he would rescue the situation for his team. In the end we lost  16-5 but we felt that we had done our self justice. Now we are targeting the Novices championships.

If you want to see the full results you can follow this link to the OLBA website.

Action continued at the club with an in-club tournament on Thursday August 8th sponsored by Rona Cashway. Congratulations to the winning team of Ron Covert, Fran Marsh and Jeanette Dempster. The full results are on the results page. Unfortunately I can’t report any more on that tournament as I was not there and I don’t have any photos. However, I do hope to get a photo of the winning team and post it on the photos page as soon as possible. 

I was delighted to see that the number of entries improved in the last few days before the tournament so our record of increasing the number of entries in every in-club tournament this year continued. Let’s keep it going.


With this tournament we tried a later start and played two twelve end games. We need your feedback on whether or not you like that format so please let me or any of the Executive know what you think.

Finally on Saturday August 10th we  hosted an Open mixed pairs tournament. Rosewood Estates was the sponsor for the tournament and we are very grateful to them for their support. Their sponsorship package included an excellent lunch and door prizes. We were delighted to have John Goyen and Marian Cunningham from Rosewood with us and to have them present the trophy. The SNAP photographer was also on hand to get photos of the prizewinners.

We have not had a home team win a Cobourg  Open Tournament for some time and we had high hopes of that changing yesterday especially since we had a home entry of 12 teams and 10 away teams. After two games Ann and Bob Tough had two wins as did Dave and Kassandra Carleton. Dave and Kassandra were very unlucky to lose their third game on an extra end .

Ann and Bob won their last game to finish with 3 wins and 40 points but they were beaten  to the trophy by Norm and Mary Smith of Peterborough who had  a total of 45+2 points. This was the fourth win in six open tournaments this year for Peterborough bowlers – I think we’ll need to ban them!

I think everyone was pleased to see Ann and Bob do so well, especially since this was Bob’s first open tournament for such a long time. It was great to have you back Bob.

This was our sixth in club tournament of the season and I’m delighted to tell you that we have seen an increase in the number of entries  for every tournament. However, unless there are more entries for the Rona tournament on Thursday August 8th this perfect record will be spoilt so please sign up for that one if you haven’t already. Don’t forget it will 2 x12 ends and will start at 10.00am.

One of the members asked me as he was leaving today if I had specially ordered the weather as it really was a perfect day for bowling and I hope you enjoyed our 106th anniversary.

We had 12 teams of triples competing and congratulations go to the trophy winning team of Ralph Stoffers, Sharon Clegg and Chuck Chidley who are pictured with the very substantial trophy which is sponsored by HTM Insurance.

Going into the final games there were 3 teams with 2 wins and at that point Ross Adams’s team had 28 points to Ralph’s 26. Eve Gorringe’s team also had two wins and 23 points so any of those three teams could have won the trophy. However, given that Ralph beat Ross and Eve lost to Ann Tough, Ralph’s team had the only perfect record of 3 wins. Their final points total was 38+1 and they only conceded 11 points all day. The full results are on the results page and there are photos of all the prize winners on the photo page.