Tauranga bowler aiming for Commonwealth Games

HIGH HOPES: Tauranga Graham Skellern has his sights set on next year's Commonwealth Games. PHOTO/Supplied

Experienced bowler Graham Skellern has set his sights on the Commonwealth Games after being selected in the New Zealand team for two international events on the Gold Coast in early June.

Skellern, a Tauranga Club member and Bay of Plenty representative for 13 years, is part of a Para-sport triples along with Palmerston North's Mark Noble and Dunedin's Carolyn Crawford. They will contest the transtasman test series against Australia and soon after the Eight Nations event at Broadbeach.

The transtasman involves the Blackjacks Men's and Women's Open and Development sides as well as the Para-sport. Skellern, who has a total of 14 centre titles, competes against Australia (two sides), England, Wales, Scotland, Malaysia and Korea in the Eight Nations.

The events are being held as a build-up to the Commonwealth Games which will be staged on the Gold Coast in April next year. The Para-sport triples event is part of the Games.

National selector Sharon Sims says the Para-sport side has the chance to cement its selection.

"As the 2018 Games are in April we have already planned a second transtasman series for November. If all goes to plan we won't see many changes in the Para or Blackjacks teams."

Skellern, the former business editor of the Bay of Plenty Times, qualified for Para-sport because of his polio, which was diagnosed in 1952 when he was six months.

"When I was 15 years, I had a major operation of shortening my good leg [the left femur] by one-and-a-half inches [3cm] to balance me out and save the strain on my spine," he said.

Skellern took part in a trial held during the NZ Open bowls in Auckland in mid-February, with his playing record and success over recent seasons also taken into account. To gain selection for New Zealand, Skellern had to be assessed and gain an International Bowls for the Disabled classification grading.

"I have always competed strongly against able-bodied bowlers and beaten many of them. I considered myself one of them. But the opportunity came along to represent my country in disabled bowls and I went for it," Skellern said.

He first got interested in playing bowls when he reported it at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane in 1982.

"I figured I could do as well as those I was reporting. So when I returned home I immediately joined the Terawhiti Club in Wellington that same year, giving up pursuing competitive golf. I knew I could be better at bowls.

"I guess it's ironic that I now have the chance of competing at the Games myself - 36 years after reporting it," Skellern said.