On the mats — indoor bowls news

HANDICAP SINGLES WINNER: Fifteen-year-old Hina Preddey won the Poverty Bay-East Coast Handicap Singles indoor bowls title when she beat nine-year-old Adam Rickard in the final. Preddey is pictured holding the shield presented by Bob and Sybil Thompson. Picture by Liam Clayton

Fifteen-year-old Lytton High School student Hina Preddey won the Poverty Bay-East Coast Handicap Singles, defeating nine-year-old Adam Rickard 14-13 in a great indoor bowls final.

On Preddey’s road to the final, she beat Doc Tipene, Jay Casey and Dylan Foster to qualify for the sudden-death playoffs.

Foster also qualified, and they drew each other to play again, with Preddey showing her class to win 13-9.

Preddey then came up against Dylan’s father, Mike Foster, in the semifinal. She beat him 17-16 in a high-scoring game.

Rickard is quickly adapting to indoor bowls. He won all four games to qualify before beating the experienced Nanette Treloar 23-11 in his semifinal.

Preddey started playing indoor bowls in 2016 — her second year at Ilminster intermediate — under the coaching of Tony Garrett, and she has been playing ever since.

In 2016, Preddey was picked for the Ilminster indoor bowls team and travelled to the AIMS Games, where the team won gold for best indoor bowls school. This win gave Preddey the passion and interest to carry on in the sport.

“The game has given me a lot of opportunities to meet new people who have supported me on my journey to reach the position I am in now,” she said.

“These people have become a large part of my life, more like whanau than friends.”

For the past three years, Preddey has been picked for the Poverty Bay-East Coast Top 8 junior rep team to travel to Hamilton every August, and for those three years, the team have won the Membery-Pearce Trophy against teams from Taranaki, North Taranaki, Auckland, Counties, Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Tauranga. She has also been picked for the Poverty Bay-East Coast Top 16 rep team playing rep bowls in Napier, Tauranga and Whakatane.

Preddey enjoys the social aspect of indoor bowls. She has built strong relationships with both young and experienced bowlers. Her goals include further improving her skills, skipping her own team and then putting something back into junior bowls in Gisborne.