The Levin Bowling club has the biggest playing programme and so some of our club championships have to be played in Winter and during the week. Such was the Mixed Fours, the first Club Championship for this coming season was played on the 19th and 20th August. 60 members contested this event on Saturday to try and qualify for the one life post section play on Sunday. To qualify you needed to win two games out of a maximum three. 90% of all the games were hard fought, going down to the last end to find the winner. Ballinger’s team of Shoota Ballinger, Wayne Judd, Dawn Dales and Lynda Orr was one of the teams that managed to qualifying winning their first two games by the slimiest of margins. Two very good teams (Adams and Cooper) didn’t make it out of qualifying. Team Adams consisting of John Adams, Lana Mahupuku, Stacey Thomas and Julie Stichbury lost their first match by only two points but were soundly beaten by team Brown in the second game. Peter Brown, Bill Clelland, Jenny Watt and Donna Gripp was the in form team on Saturday but couldn’t maintain their form on Sunday being soundly beaten by Neville Turnbull, Dylan Thomas, Sharon Turnbull and Diana McGill. The other fancy team of Brian Cooper, Rex Spicer, Audrey Sciascia and Alice Spicer lost their first two games by a cliff hanger, 9-10 & 9-10.
With eight teams qualifying made of a full day of bowls on Sunday. Turnbull crushed Brown 20-3 while the other quarter final games were all very close within a few points. Murray Griffin beating Geerston 9-8, Ballinger 10-7 over Cotter and Bagnall beat Rose 9-7. The semi finals again saw team Turnbull crush their opposition Griffin winning 15-5, while Ballinger had yet another cliff hanger winning on the last end and beating Bagnall 11-9. In the final Sharon Turnbull played exceptional well and team Turnbull jumped out to a very handy lead but Ballingers team slowing brought the game back to even with three ends to play. Turnbull went into the last end two shots up on the board but lost the end by four. Another very close game for Ballinger that could of gone either way, 12-10.
Team Ballinger: Lead Lynda Orr with #2 Dawn Dales watching.
