Takapuna’s outstanding women’s bowlers maintained their excellent record at the national sevens inter-club competition with another podium finish when the 2023 championship was held in Wellington in mid-April.
However, they couldn’t quite match the feats of 2020-21, when they finished a close runner-up to Nelson, or that of last November at Browns Bay when they won the 2021-22 version.
This season they had to be content with finishing third equal, with a loss in the semi-final to Nelson, who, as in 2020-21, had two of New Zealand’s greatest ever bowlers in Jo Edwards and Val Smith as the mainstays.
While it was disappointing not to be able to repeat November’s triumph at Browns Bay it was still a worthy effort from Takapuna and until her loss in the semi-final to Edwards, another superb display in what has been a vintage season for Selina Goddard.
Until the semi-final, Selina had been in superb touch as the team’s singles specialist. She won six out of six, all five in the qualifying play and then in the quarter-final. That followed her epic singles win in the national championships in the New Year, her second place in the national mixed pairs in March and a gold and bronze in the pairs and fours at the recent multi-nations championship in Australia.
Takapuna was without two accomplished bowlers in Lisa Parlane and Anne Dorreen from the team which won the event last season, but had good replacements in Keiko Kurohara and Trish Hardy, and former Black Jack Wendy Jensen remained to again expertly skip the four.
Adele Ineson, Lauren Mills and Robyne Walker also survived from 2022 and in what was tough competition all contributed to the team effort.
There was also disappointment for North Harbour’s men’s representative in Wellington, Browns Bay’s Colin Rogan (singles), Brian Wilson and John Feast (pairs) and Neil Fisher, John Walker, David McMurchy and Mike Garton (fours).
By finishing fourth in their section they failed to qualify. But they were in tough group which included the eventual champion, Southland’s Gore, and the runner-up, Nelson’s Stoke. And Browns Bay could boast that in the opening round it did have a 2-1 win over Stoke.
Meanwhile, at centre level the main focus in April was on the junior levels, or those bowlers who, no matter their age whether it be in their teens or 70s, have been members of clubs for under five years.
These various tournaments offered reassurance that the playing standard within North Harbour should continue to be high. Takapuna’s Skye Renes achieved the remarkable feat for a fifth year player of winning the centre’s open singles title.
Skye, with Shaun Goldsbury, who plays his Harbour bowls with Takapuna, made the national mixed pairs semi-finals in March, and Shaun then won the Harbour one-to-five years men’s singles title.
However, Skye couldn’t join him in making it a personal double, for Helensville’s Sharon Parker won the centre’s one-to-five women’s title. She clearly has good bowling genes as her father is Ron Cowper, who with 10 centre titles has a bar to his gold star.
Helensville, a club much admired by its peers for consistently boxing above its weight, won the junior inter-club title played at Easter weekend and Orewa was another club to show considerable depth among its newer bowlers.
It provided three of the semi-finalists in the any combination pairs one-to-five championship, with Wayne Harris and Alan McQuoid beating Paul and Carol Hollows in the final.
