Bowls: Taranaki club claim bronze at NZ event

Grant Hassall

Two bold efforts netted two bronze medals for Paritutu in the New Zealand interclub bowls finals in Auckland on Sunday.

Both the men’s and women’s sides had enjoyed successful competitions on Friday and Saturday, securing positions in the semifinals on Sunday morning.

But that was where it ended, with the men falling 2-1 to Gore and the women losing 3-0 to Invercargill.

The two Southland clubs were in turn beaten by Auckland, in the men’s final, and Carlton Cornwall, in the women’s decider.

Singles player Dean Elgar went through with five-straight wins in section play, before dropping his two post section games, the semifinal 21-13 to Sheldon Bagrie-Howley. Adam Collins and Darren Goodin won three in section play and the quarterfinal, but fell 18-15 to Craig Tinker and Craig Merrilees in the last four.

The Paritutu four of John Zittersteijn, Kurt Smith, Camron Horo and Aidan Zittersteijn, after four victories in section play, won both knockout games to complete an excellent tournament.

In the women’s, Paritutu won two of its four head-to-head matches in qualifying, advancing to the knockout stage after winning six of the 12 individual games. Briar Atkinson took three wins from four in the singles, Amanda Crehan and Bridget Fletcher won twice in the pairs and the four of Alesha Quay, Tina Atkinson-Watt, Barbara Harvey and Gale Fache had one win.

Atkinson led the charge in a 2-1 quarterfinal win over Stoke, winning the singles 21-12. After the pairs had been trounced 25-4, the Paritutu four secured the tie with a 14-10 victory. Paritutu had a sniff in all three games in the semis but lost the lot.

Meanwhile, there was a terrific result in the Bowls3five regional playoff at Hawera Park on Sunday for the New Plymouth trio of Sharleen Healey, Michael Healey and Laurence Hori.

The team met Aramoho’s Reen Belliss, Keith Slight and Peter Belliss, the Whanganui winners. New Plymouth took the first set 5-4 and Aramoho the second 3-2, meaning it all came down to a one-end tiebreaker. New Plymouth took two shots on the deciding end to secure its position in the New Zealand finals which will be held in Wellington on May 3-5.

On the local scene, both the Fitzroy/Stratford-Avon under-10s 2-4-2 pairs and the Okato men’s fours attracted maximum fields of 32 sides each for the two-day tournaments.

Overall honours in the under-10s event went to Fitzroy’s Ian Dawson and Evan Jones while the popular winners of the Okato event were Emmett Fleming, Jonty Linn, Steve Walker and Jordan Linn (West End).