Since she took up bowls – reluctantly – in 1988, Beattie has excelled as a player, administrator, coach and umpire. In 2021 she was made a life member of Bowls Gisborne-East Coast.
With her latest honour, she takes the opportunity to promote umpiring, and particularly measuring, as rewarding and worthwhile pursuits for bowlers.
“We desperately need the clubs to get one or two people sitting their field exam as umpires, or just measurers, because we’re getting older each year.
“I think we have only six full umpires and three measurers in the Gisborne-East Coast centre, and most of them play.”
Naturally, given the choice, they prefer to play, she says.
“It’s difficult to be an umpire who is playing. If you are measuring, you might have to leave your game, and in a tournament most of the games are time-limited.
“We have managed, but there will be a time when we can’t – if we don’t get more. Everyone thinks they know the laws ... underline ‘thinks’.”
Beattie says measuring – where the positions of two or more bowls in relation to the jack are measured to see which is closest – is not as easy as it might seem.
“Measurers determine who gets the shot.”
Sometimes players who have not been trained for it will do that measuring, she says.
“It can make a big difference if they are not doing it properly. I cringe sometimes when I see it. If they want to measure, they should become measurers.”
Steph Beattie has a history of going deep into her sport. She played netball (then called basketball) at school and was “dragged into” the indoor game (then called indoor basketball) by a classmate.
She decided to concentrate on her new sport after an age-group rep netball coach told her she’d have to choose one code or the other.
She preferred the “faster and more exciting” indoor game.
At 17 she made the Gisborne reps and was the youngest in the team.
In 1963 she married Dave Beattie, and their children – Tanya, Corinne, Shane and DJ – all played basketball. No surprise there. Mum kept playing and took the children along.
She coached school basketball teams and, when one of her children swam competitively, she helped with learn-to-swim classes.
The bowls connection was in the background. Her father, Alton “Tinnie” Ashwell (he was considered lucky in his youth), won several major centre tournaments, including the Burton Cup. Her mother, Molly Ashwell, played at the Riverside Women’s Bowling Club and had a strong team. And her husband Dave played a handy game.
When Molly Ashwell was put up to skip a team, she shoulder-tapped daughter Steph to play lead.
Initially Steph resisted – “No, it’s an old ladies’ game” – but her mother persisted so she had a couple of practice sessions with her parents. She was “super fit” from playing basketball, but the mental challenge of bowls intrigued her. She said she would give it a go for 12 months, and loved it.
Molly Ashwell’s team travelled a lot. Gisborne’s female bowlers were organised as a sub-centre of Hawke’s Bay, which meant a lot of interaction with Hawke’s Bay and places further afield for the serious bowler. It meant Steph Beattie made rapid progress ... only, she wasn’t known as Steph in bowls circles.
When her mother introduced Steph to her bowls friends, she used a family nickname coined when Steph (Stephenie) was an infant.
“My elder sister Patricia couldn’t say ‘bubbie’; she would say ‘Bobbie’.”
And that’s the name that has stuck among bowlers, except for a few who knew her from basketball.
After male and female bowlers in Gisborne amalgamated to form the Gisborne-East Coast centre in 1996, Bobbie Beattie was on the centre board from 1996 to 2017, serving as vice-president for a term. She also served as tournament convener.
In the late 1990s she was one of three Gisborne bowlers – Glenys Whiteman and Pat Wareham were the others – who got into the New Zealand School of Excellence under Bowls New Zealand director of coaching John Murtagh.
In 2000-01, Bobbie Beattie was picked for a team of 10 bowlers selected from Manawatū, Wairarapa, Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne for the Super 8 tournament. They played all the other areas at a national final and won.
The following season she was selected again, although the number of players in a team was cut to seven, and they won the tournament again.
The competition died after the sponsors pulled out, but it had given Bobbie Beattie two national titles.
“I thought, ‘I can’t do any better than that. I should spend some time doing something for someone else.’”
She had been doing things for other people her whole life. The second eldest of eight children, four girls followed by four boys, Bobbie helped her mother as much as she could.
“We weren’t very well off. Mum and Dad were both out working so I was looking after my four brothers when they came home from school.
“I always enjoyed working with kids. You bring yourself down to their level and relate to them.”
As she had with basketball, she got into coaching juniors – intermediate students – first at Riverside Women’s Bowling Club and then at the Gisborne Bowling Club.
While she doesn’t coach as much as she used to, she is the centre senior women’s bowls selector.
She became an umpire relatively early in her bowls career, in 1992.
“I was talked into it, but I thought I needed to learn the laws.”
She moved into teaching others, and has yet to have a student who has failed the test at the end of training.
Helen Stallard, originally from Gisborne, oversaw New Zealand bowls umpiring when Bobbie Beattie came through, and had been particularly helpful.
“My father always said, ‘If you are going to do something, you don’t have to beat the world; just do what you can’.”
