It's back to school time so that means the end of the junior bowler sessions. The kids enjoyed games and lunch today before the end of season awards. All the juniors received a "goody bag" which will help them with school (pens, calculators, binders etc) and there were also awards in various categories. On behalf of all the juniors Baylee Van Steijn made a very nice speech thanking all the adult members who help with the juniors, especially Sharyl Ann. In a very nice touch she also thanked Ralph for the excellent greens, me for getting pictures in the papers and Norma and Louisa for letting Ralph and me out!

Here's a slide show - Enjoy

Following the MVP tournament in Cobourg on Saturday some of the juniors were at a tournament in Peterborough on Sunday.

Will Richardson and Ben Van Steijn teamed up to play pairs and Baylee Van Steijn played with  Aislin Wood from Midland (Ontario. U 18 medalist).

Braden Saunders played in the 4321 tournament.

Baylee and Aislin were then drawn to play Will and Ben in the first game which Will and Ben narrowly won. However Baylee and Aislin went on to win their next two games with very large margins to finish 2-1. Will and Ben also finished 2-1.

After three games Baylee and Aislin were second and Will and Ben third.

Braden had 3 great games in 4-3-2-1. He scored in the high 40s in two games and in the mid 30s in one. At the end of the day he and another boy were 2 lads were tied with the same number of points. They had also won the same number of ends so the tie breaker was “who had won the head to head game”. Unfortunately Braden came second in that.

Hence the Cobourg Juniors came home with 2 silvers and 1 bronze.  Sharyl Ann reports that she  was very proud of her students, not only of the way they behaved on the greens but also with their deportment off the greens.

What a beautiful day for bowling it was today. It would have been nice to have more members playing in the singles championships but we still had a good tournament with some excellent bowling. And we had new champions this year.

The ladies tournament has been won by Norma Stoffers for the last two years but she was not able to defend her title this year. Nan Hendren, Eve Gorringe, Helen Beaton and Carol Dewey played a round robin which Nan won. The vital game was that in which Nan beat Eve. Nan finished with  a perfect record of 3-0 and Eve finished second at 2-1.

In the men's tournament Ralph Stoffers and I have contested the final for the last two years, each winning once. This year turned out different. In a double knock-out format the clinching game was David Brister against Ralph. Going into that game David was  2-0 and Ralph was 1-1. I was 2-1 at that stage and a win by Ralph would have meant a three way tie. (Guess who I was supporting!) However, in a very close game which swung backwards and forwards David came through to win and claim the trophy with a 3-0 record. I finished second at 2-1.

Congratulations to Nan and David. You will find photos of the winners on the photos page.

What a busy time of year this is at the club. Today it was the juniors who took centre stage with a successful 4321 tournament sponsored by MVP Sports.

 There was a strong field from  Cobourg as well as from  Lindsay, Peterborough,  Oshawa, Midland and Etobicoke.

In all, 25 juniors competed in two groups. Group A was players with 3 or more years experience and Group B  less than 3 years.

In Group A our main hopes rested with Ontario silver medal winner, Will Richardson as well as Ben and Baylee Van Steijn.  This was  a singles tournament and each player played 3 games of 10 ends with a points scoring system where 10 points were at stake in each end. It wasn’t the best of days for the Van Steijns who were more or less out of the running for the main prizes after the second game.

However, after two games Will Richardson was only one point behind the  leader Cori Millard of Lindsay and playing against Millard and another Lindsay player, Martin Brian, in the third and final game Will scored 46 points to finish seven points ahead and win his group. 

In Group B the Lindsay club dominated taking the first three places. The winner of the group was Riley Finn with 141 points. The full results are on the results page. Also there is a slide show of the tournament below.

We only had 6 teams in the novice tournament yesterday but it turned out to be a really good tournament with evenly matched teams and a very close result.

The tournament was won by David Brister, Marian Trudell and Shirley Vander Schaaf who are pictured with the trophy.

After the second round only one team had two wins – that of Ben Van Steijn, George Lawrence and Ralph Hewitt. But four of the six teams were one win and one loss. I was playing with Barb Lawrence and Arnold Bowman and we played Ben’s team in the final game. If Ben won he would be the tournament winner. We had a very good game with both teams making some great shots and it went down to the last end. Ben made a great shot to sit three (which would have been good enough to win) but I then snuck in with my last bowl to win 10-7.

The final scores were David Brister 2 wins and 35 points. Louisa Arthur (playing with Vince Tamburello and June Bowman) 2 wins and 34+2. My team with 2 wins and 32 and Ben’s team 2 wins and 30+2. Only 5 points covering four teams!

A good day for the Bowmans and the Arthurs.

On  a personal note this was the last club novice tournament that Louisa and I will play in. Our five years are up at the end of the season.

Our thanks go to our sponsor James Jin of Pharmacy 101 and those members who made the day a success.

District 14 Novice Playdowns

In 2013 Ralph Stoffers and I (Bill Arthur) teamed up with Port Hope’s Stan Zuly to compete in the District Novices Championship. We won the District title and went on to reach the quarter finals in the Provincial Championships. However that was Ralph’s  last year as a novice so Stan and I recruited Oshawa’s John MacKenzie to the team. The District 14 play downs were held at Lindsay over the weekend and I’m pleased to report that we won the District championship and will now compete at the Provincials in Sarnia next month.

There were four teams competing so it was a round robin to determine the winners. We won our first game against the Lindsay team but then lost our second game against the Pickering team. We were trailing them 6-10 when play was suspended on Saturday because of heavy rain. When play resumed on Sunday they closed out the game winning by 4 points. So at that stage we were  1-1, Lindsay was 0-2, Pickering was 1-1 and Oshawa was 2-0. In the final round Pickering beat Lindsay to finish 2-1 and we  comprehensively beat Oshawa to finish 2-1. That meant Pickering , Oshawa and us  all finished 2-1 and seven end tie breakers would be required. We drew a bye to go straight into the final and Pickering beat Oshawa and therefore played us in the final 7 end tie breaker. In a close game we were tied 4-4 after 5 ends but a 2 in the sixth end and 1 in the final end gave us a 7-4 win to qualify for the Provincials. (pictured are l-r lead John McKenzie, skip, Stan Zuly and vice Bill Arthur).

Scotiabank Mixed Triples

In our latest open tournament on Thursday August 14th six teams from Peterborough, Whitby, Oshawa, Trenton and Campbellford competed against six Cobourg teams in a mixed triples tournament sponsored by Scotiabank. On an unseasonably cold day which felt more like a fall day the teams each played 3 twelve end games. The Cobourg teams got off to a slow start with only two teams winning their opening game, those skipped by Jean Livingston and me.  Norm Hancock’s Whitby team was in top place after the first round and they consolidated their position in the second round with a 14-8 win against my team. Two other teams had perfect records after two games, Larry Wilson’s Trenton Team and Sylvia Poulain’s Cambellford team. Hancock played Poulain in the top game in the third round and had a narrow win  by 12-11 to claim the Scotiabank trophy

After his success in the previous open tournament Ron Covert, playing with Vince Tamburello and Marlene Randall,  was again in the money with the prize for the highest one game win. Well done Marlene in this her first open tournament.

The best placed Cobourg teams were Ralph Stoffers (fifth win 2 wins and 36 points and my team (6th with 2 wins and 35 points). I should point out that we did actually have another Cobourg member in the prize money. It was Geoff Montgomery but he was playing on Sylvia Poulain’s Canmpbellford team.

The full results are on the results page

It was beginning to look as though we would not have a Cobourg team winning an open tournament this season. But then Ron Covert and Helen Beaton overcame a strong field to claim the Rosewood Estates mixed pairs tournament on Saturday.

The favourites were Al Handlechner of Peterborough and Al Purcell of Agincourt who had both won Cobourg tournaments earlier in the season but it was Ron and Helen who came good.

Sixteen teams competed including teams from Port Hope, Dundas, Agincourt, Oshawa, Peterborough and Kingston. In addition to their sponsorship money  Rosewood Estates  also provided an excellent lunch and provided a gift basket for a free competitors draw.

Each team played three  12 end games. Ron and Helen got off to a solid start with a 13-7 win over one of the Oshawa teams and then played another Oshawa team in the second round winning 16-6.

After two rounds there were four  teams with two wins. As expected, Handlechner and Purcell’s teams were lying first and second and that meant they would play one another in the final round. Ron and Helen were lying fourth and played the third placed team from the Dundas club skipped by Beth Callowhill.

That draw favoured Ron's team as the Handlechner/Purcell game was very close and low scoring. Al Handlechner won to finish with 3 wins and 42 points. However Ron and Helen had a comprehensive 17-8 win to finish with 46 points – enough to take the title by 4 points. Congratulations to them.

Marilyn McMillan and Ben Van Steijn took the prize for the high score one game winner. Full results are on the results page.

Junior National Championships

You will recall that Will Richardson qualified for the National junior championships by winning the silver medal at the Ontario championships. The nationals took place in Etobicoke last week and Will did well in his round robin group section against some very good and more experienced championship players. After two wins on the first day he did not have such a good second day and did not qualify from his group. However, Will should be proud of his performance especially since this was his first appearance in a championship of this importance and he was playing against older and more experienced players. The experience should serve him well for the future. Congratulations Will - well done.

Another successful tournament yesterday. I always think that the Anniversary tournament and the Canada Day tournament are the two most special of our in club tournaments so it was great to have a good turn out yesterday. Lots of people contributed as always but a special thanks to drawmasters George and Barb Lawrence doing the job for the very first time. Also thanks to Roy Thorneycroft for donating the cash prize for a spider.

It is a while since we had a group photo so we started this special occasion with one.

It was fitting that Eve Gorringe, who carried out much of the research into the club’s history should be the winning skip on this special occasion. (Pictured are David Brister, Eve Gorringe and Chuck Chidley with the HTM Insurance trophy).

It was a runaway win as well. Each team played three 10 end games and Eve’s team was the only one to win all 3 games. The maximum possible points score was 45 and it  was nearly a perfect result in that her team scored 44 points. Their closest challenge was from the team of Ron Covert, Barbara Covert and Ralph Hewitt who, after winning their first two games, lost to Eve’s team 14-7 in the final game of the day and finished second with 2 wins and 32 points.

The full results are on the results page and there are more photos on the photos page.

I was looking at some of the photos from earlier this year and it reminded me of the challenges that Ralph and Mike have faced in getting the greens to the fine state they are in now. I've therefore put together a short slide show below to demonstrate this. They and their small band of helpers really have done a great job.