NEWS – 2 March 2022
Garioch Indoor Bowling Club Ladies team recently won the North Division 1 title and was promoted to North Premier League for 2022/23. The team was undefeated after 5 games. Perhaps knowing the league was “won”, surprisingly lost to Stonehaven by only the narrowest of defeats 51-54.
The Garioch Club and Turriff Club combined to provide a joint team in the reorganised league, with Scottish Indoor Bowling Association endorsing the entry.
Because of travel, the 8 clubs in the North were formed into two leagues of four clubs. The Premier League comprised Elgin, Arbroath, Fraserburgh and Aberdeen, while North Division 1 included Buchan, Dundee, Garioch and Stonehaven.
The results in both Leagues finished with some surprises. Aberdeen was sitting bottom of the Premier League, while Dundee finished with one win in Division One. Both are usually very strong. The comment from all Clubs was that they were struggling to get strong teams because of ladies being reluctant to repeat membership with Covid still around.
Pat Clarke from Garioch took on the Manager role for 2021/22, and the Garioch & Turriff team did themselves proud. Pat was one of the Garioch trios that won the Scottish and British titles in 1994.
Discussions led to a pool of 14 players, seven from each club, with Carol Stuart and Liz Frazer (both Turriff) and Linda Harper (Garioch) usually skips of the three rinks of four players.
Both Club players gelled well together and had some excellent results finishing with 5 wins, and then the unfortunate last match.
Fine wins were recorded against Buchan 80-39 (home fixture), Dundee 60-57 (away), Buchan (away) 54-52, Stonehaven (home) 81-40, Dundee (home) 72-39, and finally, the single defeat, the last match 51-54 at Stonehaven.
A great season and more competitive matches can be expected next winter.
National Ladies Knock-out Competitions saw some poor results compared to recent years. As a result, no titles came to the Garioch this winter.
In the Singles second round, Carla Banks was beaten by Kara Lees. However, they went on to win the title over her Abbeview teammate.
Linda Harper, with Angela Banks, came unstuck in round 1 of the 2 Bowl Pairs against Dundee. Anne Lawless with Linda Harper again lost the Pairs in the preliminary round to Dundee 21-22.
The National Triples represented the Club, Angela Banks, Lucy Willox and Carla Banks, and they too failed to get past the Preliminary Round, this time against Turriff 14-20.
The 4s had a fine win over Aberdeen 18-16 but lost out heavily to Stonehaven 16-26. Angela Banks, Anne Lawless, Linda Harper, and skip Carla Banks.