What have been 12 months of considerable achievement by Bowls North Harbour has been capped by four of the centre’s players winning national recognition.
Seasoned international Tony Grantham, a member of both Birkenhead and Browns Bay clubs, has been recalled to the Black Jacks for November’s transtasman series on the Gold Coast.
A top performance in this event should earn Grantham a place in the New Zealand team which will return to the Gold Coast next April for the Commonwealth Games.
Also going to November’s transtasman series are two of North Harbour’s most promising players, Browns Bay’s 23-year old Rory Soden and Glenfield’s 19-year old Paris Baker. Both have been chosen in the New Zealand development teams.
It has been an amazing few years for both these youngsters as neither has been playing all that long.
Soden, who hails from Great Barrier Island, only took up the sport in his last few years at high school and is still eligible for Harbour’s one-to-eight year representative side. With him as a spearhead Harbour has won the national teams title in this event for the past two seasons.
He has already achieved other national honours. He was in the composite four which finished runners-up at the national championships which in the 2014-15 season were held with such success at Browns Bay. Earlier this year he won the New Zealand open triples title.
One of his Harbour coaches, Graham Dorreen says of Soden: “He’s very competitive but with a fantastic disposition and is never ruffled.”
Baker only took up bowls to help her father recover from a stroke. She, too, showed a natural flair and in three successive seasons was in an Onehunga four which won Auckland’s one to five year title. Earlier this year she was third in both the national under 21 and under 18 championships and in the Harbour one-to-eight year representatives. But her greatest achievement came at the start of the new 2017-18 season when she overcame several more experienced bowlers to win Auckland’s open premiership singles.
The fourth Harbour player to gain national honours this year has been Bart Robinson, from a notable Helensville bowls family. A centre gold star holder, Robinson was in the New Zealand Professional Bowlers Association team which in August played its Australian counter-part.
A key role in much of Harbour’s recent success has been the livewire chairman of the centre’s board, Dorreen. A tidy bowler himself with one centre junior title and 11 club titles to his credit, Dorreen has become an effective coach and headed the backroom team which helped the one-to-eight year representative team to consecutive national titles.
Having already won Harbour coach of the year titles in 2016-17 and named Bowls New Zealand’s volunteer of the year in 2015, Dorreen this year had his exploits with the one-to-eight year representatives honoured with the national coach of the year accolade.
The success of the centre and of Browns Bay in staging the 2014-15 nationals will see a return to the same venue for this season’s national pathways club championships next April 17-27.
Meanwhile, Harbour has started the new representative season brightly with the open teams winning the recent Battle of the Bridge tournament from Auckland. Harbour won a tight competition 25-22, a thrilling climax coming when in the last match David Eades recovered in his men’s singles clash with Scott Cotterill from 18-22 to win 25-22. In their series the one-to-eight years squads trail Auckland and Northland but the one-to-five year squads lead Auckland and Northland.
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