​For the Cobourg Lawn Bowling Club the Victoria Day weekend marks the first major events of the season. Over five days the club held the OSGA55+ district games; an Open House and finally a prestigious open fours tournament on Victoria Day.
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It may surprise some people to learn that the sport of lawn bowls can become addictive, as many of the Cobourg members can testify. Indeed it is such an addictive sport that King Henry V111 was forced to ban the playing of lawn bowls because it was affecting the output of fletchers who made bows and arrows. The exception was of course by the wealthy who could spend all their time at play. These days you need neither be wealthy nor have lots of time to spare to play the sport and the club was hoping to attract more addicts with an open house on Saturday May 20th.

This was very well attended and as well as receiving free instruction from club members a BBQ lunch was available. This was organised by Baylee van Steijn who used an RBC150 grant to raise funds for ‘Northumberland Food For Thought’. Donations from visitors totalled $626 which will go to a very good cause. Click here for photos from the event

The winners of the OSGA55+ district games on Thursday May 18th were Ralph and Norma Stoffers  and Melanie Duras from our club who won all three of their round robin games to take the gold medal. The silver medal winners, also from Cobourg, with two wins and one loss were Bill and Louisa Arthur and Nan Hendren.

On Victoria Day eighteen teams from Oshawa, Pickering, Peterborough, Cosburn Park, Campbellford as well as the home club competed in the Open Fours tournament which was once again sponsored by Lauria Hyundai.

Each team played three twelve end games with the wins and cumulative points scored deciding the prize winners. The 2016 winners of the open fours (Cobourg members Dan and Sharyl Ann Milligan and Baylee and Ben van Steijn) came back to defend their title but after winning their first two games lost out to a team from Peterborough led by Bob Reynolds. The Reynolds team placed second because although they had a perfect 3 wins they were beaten by Bob Matthews Oshawa team who also had 3 wins but 39 points compared to Reynolds 37. Pictured are Cobourg President Nan Hendren with the winning team of Anna Panton, Rick Tompkins, Alice Matthews and Bob Matthews. 
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Next weekend sees the start of the District playdowns which lead to Ontario Championships. The club will be represented by two ladies fours teams and one mens’ fours team at the playdowns in Whitby. Meanwhile back at the club there will be the first in club tournament of the season. Visitors are welcome at all events.

I will start this piece on the Canadian junior championships by talking about an award made to our greens keeper Ralph Stoffers. Why you might ask. Well, read on and all will be clear

Ralph has been volunteer greens keeper for the last five years. Despite having no previous experience of greens keeping he has, through hard work and much research, produced greens that become better every year and are recognised by visiting bowlers as amongst the best (if not the best) around. To recognise his achievements and the many hours of voluntary work he was presented with a certificate of appreciation from the Ontario Lawn Bowls Association during the anniversary tournament at the weekend. 
 
Two people who have benefited from the excellent Cobourg greens are juniors Ben and Baylee van Steijn. (Now you see where I am going with this) Access to such good greens has undoubtedly helped them in their lawn bowling careers. Ben has also been working with Ralph to learn about greens keeping and that plus his work at the Cobourg Ecology garden resulted in him receiving a scholarship from the Cobourg Horticultural Society, which seems rather appropriate at this time as it was Horticultural Society members who formed the lawn bowling club in 1907.
 
Ben and sister Baylee were in Vancouver last week competing in the Canadian junior championships, their second appearance at the championships. After the round robin Ben had a 4-2 record and 12 points. However to have a chance at competing for a medal 15 points were required. He finished tied for 5th place in a field of 18 – an excellent performance.
 
Sister Baylee finished in fourth place in 2015 but this time went one better to finish third and take home a bronze medal. Struggling with flu throughout the three days of competition she finished the round robin in fourth place with a 4-3 record. Her opponent in the bronze medal game, Emma Boyd (BC) had beaten her 18-10 in their round robin match and when Boyd took an 11-4 lead (first to 18 points wins) it looked bad for Baylee. However in an epic match she clawed her way back to take bronze with an 18-17 win. Her bronze medal confirms her place in the Canadian youth development squad for another year. 

Monday September 9th and Ralph Stoffers, Carol Dewey, Dave and Kathleen Shirley, Louisa and I are at the club at 7.00am on a cold Monday morning – not the time we would normally bowl.  But this is no normal bowling day – this is bowling in a movie!

That was the first day of shooting on the made for TV movie ‘Rocky Road’ –a story about a young executive who loses his high flying job in the city and returns to his small town home to help his father run an ailing ice cream business. So what’s the connection with lawn bowling?

The script calls for the male lead, played by Mark Salling from the show Glee, to be challenged to a game of lawn bowls ( I have no idea why). So we were supposed to be bowling in the background as the actors played out their scenes. But, to our surprise, we were required for walk on parts and to actually appear on camera as well as provide background bowling scenes. I have to say that we were awesome! If our scenes ever make it past the cutting room floor you will see what I mean. If we are left on the cutting room floor you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Lots of the bowling scenes were fake in that we could not bowl the length of the green. Because of cameras and other equipment we could only roll our bowls about 20 feet, so our bowling action looked more like it was short mat bowling rather than regular lawn bowling.

We had fun and it was interesting to see how things are done on a movie set but there was an awful lot of waiting around and I could not believe how many times we had to repeat a scene. The Assistant Director kept coming to us and saying “that was great lawn bowlers but we’re just going to have to do it again”. A pity the professional actors couldn’t get it right!

The location for the movie is supposed to be Vermont so anything that showed Cobourg or anything Canadian had to be moved. That’s why the US flag was flying and the Cobourg Lawn Bowling Club sign was turned back to front.

On Wednesday September 18th the crew was back at the club to film an internal scene where some of the actors were playing cards in the club house. We were not involved in that but I was there throughout to keep an eye on things.

The windfall for the club was the fees we were paid for the use of the club. In addition to the fees for the two days of filming we also picked up fees for use of the washrooms on three days when scenes were being shot in Church Street and in Victoria Park.

I managed to get some photos and there is a slide show below.

Since I joined the club in 2010 the Tuesday night jitney has always been the best attended. I guess it is the combination of nice summer nights, the band playing in Victoria Park and the knowledge that it will be well attended and therefore a good social as well as competitive evening.

I'm usually playing so don't therefore get the opportunity to take photos of the jitneys but this week I was on the verandah so here are some photos that I took with some light hearted observations!