ISSUE 17 FEBRUARY 2011
THE BOWLS NZ CHALLENGE TROPHY AN ELITE TOURNAMENT WITH A DIFFERENCE By Crispin Anderlini You may have heard the name mentioned on the Bowls website, talked about excitedly by coaches and casually thrown into conversation on the greens by developing bowlers. But what is the Challenge Trophy? It is a tournament designed to offer players who are striving to reach top level competitive bowls a chance to be exposed to intensively competitive conditions, to test their abilities and train them for the rigors that face an elite bowler. Rewarding the best team with the trophy helps foster a further sense of competition among the bowlers, it’s about testing yourself against the best local talent, and proving you can ‘get your green’ under pressure. Played in a uniquely fluid format, where players can switch positions and teams change from game to game, the 48 players representing the cream of the national crop are divided into four teams that correspond to four general areas around the country: Northern, Central, Mainland and Southern. Each team consists of six men and six women that play each discipline: Triples on the first day, Pairs the next and Singles on the final day. In this way the players in the Talent
Development Programmes can roll up next to and against some of the country’s successful international bowlers. At the same time, the Black Jacks in attendance are able to keep their game sharp for the next international encounter, impart some knowledge, educate the new players, and develop their own skills. “They need tough experiences to improve,” says High Performance Programme Leader Lyn Johnston of the development players and Black Jacks alike. “The Challenge Trophy is aimed at providing top-level competition, and to expose players to the level of pressure and ability they will find at the international level. That’s what this is about.” The competition is an attempt to reduce the gap between domestic and international competition, so that developing players have greater understanding of the performance expectations at elite level. Among the youngest players at this year’s event, and those with a burning ambition to wear the silver fern, were players like Euan Wong (2010 Bowls NZ National Secondary School Champion, Boy’s Singles), Emma Le Lievre and Monte Pawa (NZ representatives in this year’s historically- victorious Junior Trans-
Tasman team). All have come up through the ranks of the High Performance and Talent Development Programmes, and all were given the chance to test their skills against the likes of Val Smith and Shannon McIlroy. In the end though, it was the players from the Mainland team that took the trophy. With 140 points at the end of the weekend, Mainland was head and shoulders above the Northern (90 points) and Southern (74 points) teams, but closely followed by the Central team (128 points) which included the likes of Black Jacks Dale Lang, Shannon McIlroy and Kaaren Guildford, as well as “young guns” Ryan Khan, Kirsten Griffin, and the Boyd sisters Mandy and Angela. However, the big names fronting the Central side weren’t enough to overcome the Mainland onslaught of victories, headed by Commonwealth games silver medalist Val Smith, who was joined by proven performers such as Jan Shirley, Shayne Sincock and Darren Redway, and backed by a stellar cast of young stars such as Amy Brenton, Misty Arnold, James Pugh, and Ryan McTaggart. The Mainland Team were able to gel as a unit, and in the face of fierce competition held their own, kept their nerve, and showed a mental strength to ensure they could always grind out a victory. With the “unreasonable” vision “to dominate the world in bowls” the chance to measure and improve performances at the highest level of competition, to test yourself against New Zealand’s growing talent base is not an opportunity to be passed up.
upshot www.bowlsnz.co.nz
11