Over the weekend of June 14-15, the Osoyoos Lawn Bowling Club held the first Desert Open International Mixed Triples Tournament.
Lakehill, as mentioned in the closing announcement, were the first club to express interest in attending and, in the end, three teams from Lakehill attended: Lakehill A (Margot Gillard, Kevin Neary, Linda Simpson), Lakehill One (Anita Wah, Deryk Barker, Judith Raymer) and Lakehill Alpha (Don Bellows, Shona Dallison, Kathryn Bridge). (Notice how carefully, not to mention tactfully, the names were chosen.)
There was a total of sixteen teams from across the province; each team played three games on the Saturday, then the top eight teams became Division A for Sunday’s playoffs, with the not-quite-top eight becoming Division B.
At the end of Saturday’s bowling, Lakehill A were in 8th place, Lakehill One in 10th and Lakehill Alpha in 11th.
Alas, because the playoffs were essentially seeded, Lakehill A played their first game on Sunday against the unstoppable top-ranked team, who had beaten Lakehill One in Saturday’s first game and who would eventually go on to win the entire tournament, and so Lakehill A were unfortunately out.
Lakehill One and Alpha won their first Sunday games (at 8 a.m.!!!???), thus putting themselves into the top four of Division B.
Sadly, after a storming start, Lakehill One collapsed about half way through their second game (Judith and Deryk will readily tell you that it was their fault and, despite playing a blinder, Anita could not quite dig the team out of the holes they found/put themselves in). As there was no playoff game to decide third and fourth positions in Division B, Lakehill One considered themselves to have come third equal.
Lakehill Alpha, on the other hand, won their second game and thus were into the Division B final (if Lakehill One had won their second game, this would have been an all-Lakehill final. If only…)
Happily, Alpha took their revenge on the team which had just beaten One, thus becoming the Division B winners.
As an aside, the team who won the tournament had a combined age somewhere north of 250 years (their skip was 92, their lead 87 and their second well into his 70s, if not older); in the final, the team they beat (handily) were probably still in their 30s.
A triumph for Grey Power and encouragement for all of us (fast) approaching that demographic.
Congratulations, then, to Don, Shona and Kathryn, Lakehill Alpha; commiserations to Margot, Kevin, Linda, Anita, Deryk and Judith. Although it is suspected that Anita’s and Judith’s anguish was probably alleviated somewhat by the fifteen bottles of wine they won in the raffle during Saturday night’s banquet.
The tournament was held in paradisiacal surroundings, the weather was hot, but not unbearable (with a welcome breeze coming off the lake for most of the games), the host club were most friendly and welcoming, and the vast majority of the competitors exemplified the good-natured etiquette for which our game is known.
A very good time was had by all and the Lakehill players have all expressed interest in attending next year.
Deryk Barker