Country clubs fill top two cup spots

RAHIWI CUP WINNERS: Te Karaka Bowling Club's team of (from left) Del Tamanui (skip), Jasmine Merrick, Erica Thompson and Janet Baty won the Rahiwi Cup for centre women's open fours at the weekend. Picture supplied

TE Karaka Bowling Club's women came to town and left with the Rahiwi Cup for centre women's open fours on Sunday.

Del Tamanui (skip), Jasmine Merrick, Janet Baty and Erica Thompson won the cup with nine points and a plus-21 differential. It was Thompson's first centre title.

Runners-up were the representatives of another country club, Tolaga Bay. Holli Elkington (s), Sharon Olsen, Kay Goldsbury and Jacqueline Horsfall also had nine points but they had a minus-15 differential.

Eight teams entered the Rahiwi Cup tournament, held on Kahutia Bowling Club's greens.

Four of the teams were from Poverty Bay Bowling Club, and one team came from each of Kahutia, Te Karaka, Gisborne and Tolaga Bay clubs.

Teams had to play four games on Saturday and three on Sunday. Each game was to last 15 ends or two hours, whichever came first.

At the end of Saturday's play, two teams had three wins and a loss — the Kahutia team of Lucy Shanks (s), Dianne Phillips, Karen Pinn and Kayaar Wimutu-Muir, and Elkington's Tolaga Bay four.

The Del Tamanui-led Te Karaka team — on two wins, a draw and a loss — were ready to pounce, while the teams of Mere Nepia (s), Jessie Davis-Law, Kathy Carroll and Lesley Seymour (Poverty Bay), and Carol Hawes (s), Ginny Sherriff, Kym Brown and Lesley McIntosh (Gisborne) — on two wins and two losses — were still in with a chance.

Three rounds of play on Sunday produced close games where the difference between teams was one shot on the last end, and others where one team romped home.

At the end of it all, the two country clubs filled the top two spots.