Rowena Jackson village celebrated a 20 year association with the Waikiwi Bowling Club, with both the village and the club hosting a huge bowls tournament for Southland.
Despite wind warnings the celebratory tournament was a great day out for the 32 teams, said one of the organisers, Ryman Healthcare Sales Advisor Julie Crofts. A special cake was cut to mark two decades of the annual event.
“The cake made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this tournament was cut by Ray Darragh and myself,” Julie said.
“Ray is a long standing club member at Waikiwi … he was absolutely delighted that I’d asked him to cut the cake, so it was really, really good.”
Julie estimated there were more than 135 players spread across the greens at both Rowena Jackson and the Waikiwi club, and said the overall winning team was skipped by Hellen Giles of Waverley. Her team mates were Ross Weir, Jane Reid and Chris Taylor.
A group of players from Rowena Jackson were happy to don uniforms from a Ryman sponsored South Island-based team that regularly competes in the Australian-based Ultimate Bowls Championship (UBC).
The Ryman Healthcare South Island Storm team played in the inaugural 2019 UBC season, with their games televised on Sky Sports and Fox Sports television channels. Two of the Storm team members, Roger Stevens and Bronwyn Stevens, are based in Southland and donated time and equipment for the 20th anniversary event in Invercargill.
Roger and Bronwyn helped skipper two of Rowena Jackson’s three competing teams. Roger said it was great sharing some Storm bowling gear for the day. “We kitted all the older ones in our team out in the Ryman Healthcare UBC uniform … so they could go toe to toe in style against the other teams,” he said.
Roger said Bronwyn, himself and the other 2019 Storm team member, New Zealand Black Jack Andrew Kelly Andrew, were now looking forward to the first 2020 UBC event to be hosted at the Deer Park Club in Victoria, Australia on April 2-3.
For the remaining 2020 events they would have an additional team member, Nelson-based Richard Collett. Richard has previously represented New Zealand in the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Roger said he would step back into more of a managerial role when Richard was playing in the UBC format.
