Bowls: Winter and Neeley win Northland Centre junior singles titles

Glen Wintle and Carol Neeley are Centre Open junior singles champs. Photo / Getty

Congratulations to Glen Wintle (Mangawhai) and Carol Neeley (Kamo) on winning the Centre Open 1-5 Junior Singles last weekend.

Both finals were of a very high standard and a good crowd of supporters saw some outstanding bowls played.

Wintle defeated Les Scott (Onerahi) 21-18 when he scored two shots on the first long end contested. The game lead went backward and forward between the two contestants with Scott getting off to a good start and then losing the lead on the 15th of 28 ends played.

This was a second junior title for Wintle after winning the pairs previously.

In the women's final the game was just as close with Mona Guttenbeil (Mangawhai) fighting back each time Neeley started to get a small lead.

The drive shot was played on two occasions by Neeley and on both occasions she was successful reversing a three-shot deficit into a one and two shot advantage.

The final score was 21-16 to Neeley.

Other qualifiers were Bill Roberts (Whangarei), Keith Stewart (Mangawhai), Ken McLeod (Mangawhai), Ken Proctor (Whangarei), Tim Cordeaux (Kensington) and Dave Smith (Onerahi).

In the women's division qualifiers were Donna Anderson, Rawi Brewster (Mangawhai) and Judy MacKenzie (One Tree Pt).

The Northland 1-8 representative teams, men and women, are in Christchurch this weekend competing in the New Zealand Intercentre finals. We wish both teams every success in this very competitive environment.

Congratulations to the Hikurangi combination of Kelvin Bint, Peter Mitchell, Gwen Lawson and Robin Sowerby who were the only four winners at the President's Day sponsored by Carter Holt Harvey Wood Products and the Centre president and his wife Diane.

In second place were Trevor Moyle, Sharon Rudman, Judi Moyle, Jill Stewart (Waipu) followed by the Dargaville combination of Eric and Margaret Smitton, and Kevin and Lorraine West in third place.

All teams competing received a gift from the sponsors, the rain stayed away for most of the day and everyone present had an enjoyable day.

Clubs/players are reminded that the Centre has a couple of surveys on its website.

Please check in and give us your input.

You should now also be looking at forwarding nominations for the Northland Bowls Sports Awards, vacancies on the Centre board, expressions of interest for positions on the high performance panel and as representative team selectors, managers, coaches.

The New Zealand under-18 and under-21 singles are in Auckland over Easter weekend and this competition will be followed by the World Masters Games, also in Auckland from April 22 to 28.

Good luck to those who have entered these events from Northland.