Berkeleyside (the leading local news source) interviewed President Ethan Bortman and club members during our July 6th Wednesday draw game. Here are some photos by a club member, including photos of Sal Garcia-Lemus teaching Ximena Natera (Berkeleyside photographer) how to lawn bowl. We expect to see Berkeleyside’s published story towards the end of the week. 😊
Two teams represented BLBC at the Fives tournament in San Francisco on June 25. Bernie, Tom, Joseph, Sarah and Sal composed one team. The other team, the Gimels, included Ginger and Ian Harris from Palo Alto, Mo, Ethan and Leslie. They succeeded in taking third place. It was a beautiful cool day in Golden Gate Park.
With thanks to Leslie Engler for the write-up and Bernadette Chan for the photos.
Less than a month ago, on June 17th, we held a farewell party for Laile Giansetto and Dave McMullen to show our appreciation for their contributions to the Club and wish them peace and happiness at their new location. We extend our love and look forward to seeing them back on the green at BLBC in the near future.
Report by Jim Corr
The 2022 PIMD (All Gender) Pairs Tournament featured several “firsts.” It was the first in two years due to the COVID pandemic ruling out this competition for 2021, and was the first ever to be held in two stages at two different greens. It was also, as far as anyone could recall, the first in PIMD to feature the “strength-to-strength” format in the final round. As far as the two-greens element is concerned, the thinking behind the PIMD Tournament Committee’s decision was that prowess at two different venues would be a good indicator of the worthiness of the champions.
Sixteen teams signed up for the event, with the first round being held at Rossmoor LBC on Saturday, May 14, randomly assigned to four round robin sections of four teams. The two winners of each section, plus the next four best in the overall standings advanced to the final round, which was held at the Berkeley club a week later.
At the latter stage, teams were matched “strength-to-strength,” which meant the team ranked Number 1 from the preliminary round played Number 2, Number 3 played Number 4, and so on down the line. Following the results of the first game, teams were re-sorted according to their new position in the standings and again played 1 v 2, 3 v 4, etc. After the second game, the process was repeated once more. Two features of this format are notable: first, as the name implies, teams get matched against their close peers from the preliminaries and, second, a team in the lower reaches of the rankings can make considerable progress toward the top if they win all their second round games and depending on how other results fall out. This latter element proved to be quite relevant.
Coming into the finals, the husband and wife team of Larry Collaco and Gloria Rios (Rossmoor) led the way, but in the first game lost out to the Berkeley duo of Hugo Deaux and Jim Audas, the only other team to have won all three games in Round 1. Hugo and Jim A. followed that with an exceedingly close win over Jim Corr (Berkeley) and Micheal McClintock (Santa Clara) that saw one of those “turning point” shots that bowlers know only too well. Holding four in the head, which would have put them two up with two ends left, Jim C. decided to try for five but, narrowly missing the line, succeeded in hitting in one of the opponents’ bowls, thereby reducing the margin on that end to one. The three-point swing was more than enough to account for Hugo and Jim Audas’s victory by one point. In another narrow win, Hugo and Jim A. overcame Tom Burnoski and Ian Cameron (San Jose) in Match 3, thereby becoming the only team to go undefeated over the two rounds of the tournament and thus well-deserved champions.
Also impressive was the performance of David Eldred and Ron Esparaza (San Francisco). Starting off the final day in last (12th) place, they put together a string of three victories and marched through the rankings to end up in 4th—and right on the heels of Tom and Ian who took third place with a one-point better differential.
Congratulations to Hugo and Jim and thanks to all at both clubs who put in the time and effort to make the event a great success.
-Jim Corr
Thank you Bernie Birt for the great photos!
You can find more photos from the day on the PIMD website
Here is Jim Corr’s 5/24/2022 report on the outcome of the 5/7/2022 Berkeley Jamboree
Berkeley Jamboree–Better Late Than Never!
Berkeley Bowlers:
It’s taken a while. So with apologies for the delay, here’s the outcome of the Jamboree.
While all lawn bowling is meant to be fun (a poor day bowling is better than a great day in front of the computer, as we like to say), the Berkeley Jamboree is one of the “funner” tournaments on the bowls calendar. Founded more years ago than most of us can remember by Howard Mackey, a longtime beloved BLBC bowler and holder of many positions of responsibility at the Club over the years, this three game triples tournament has an unusual format in which participants retain their position (Skip, Vice, or Lead) throughout, but change teams over the course of the day. All bowlers hand in a scorecard for each of their games and, at the end, when the numbers are totted up, prizes go to the three top performers in each position.
This year’s event, held on Saturday, May 2022 and overseen by Hugh Deaux, had its own mini-crisis as all nine would-be participants from the Leisure Town club had to call off near the last minute because of a COVID outbreak among its members. With some scrambling and arm-twisting, mainly of BLBC members, by Hugo, he still managed to field a force of 36 bowlers on the day. Perhaps the resulting over-preponderance of Berkeley bowlers in the numbers—or home green advantage—affected the results. (The only alternative explanation, of course, would be the undoubted skill of BLBC bowlers 😉)
When all was said and done: the winners were as follows:
Leads:
Rolayn Tauben (Berkeley)
Gary Samonsky (Berkeley)
Charles Russo (Berkeley)
Vices:
Jim Audas (Berkeley)
Glenn Nunez (Berkeley)
David Eldred (San Francisco)
Skips:
Sal Garcia (Berkeley)
Larry Murphy (San Francisco)
Fred Anast (Palo Alto)
Congrats to all the prize winners, and as always, a big shout out to our great hospitality team who prepared sustenance, to those who helped with green prep and takedown, and to Dave McMullen, Greenskeeper, who put in many hours to bring the green literally “up to speed.” Photo Credits to Rolayn Tauben (titling is mine).
Jim
PS: A report on the 2022 PIMD Pairs Tournament will be forthcoming shortly, either from me or PIMD President Arthur Stewart. Spoiler alert: this year’s champions are Berkeley’s own Hugo Deaux an Jim Audas.
Happy Mother’s Day from BLBC and the participants at yesterday’s Berkeley Jamboree! Kudos to Hugo Deaux, the awesome Tournament Director!
Happy Friday!
At a Friday draw game 🙂
At a Wednesday draw game 🙂
Here is the Aussie Pairs Report with photographs credited to Jeff Schaper.
Bowlers:
This year’s PIMD Aussie Pairs[1] Tournament was held at Rossmoor LBC on Saturday April 23, with a full field of 84 hopefuls forming 42 teams on Rossmoor’s three beautiful rinks. A fun variation on the standard pairs format, the Aussie game tends to favor teams that show strength in both positions, allowing the traditional Lead to demonstrate their “skip shots” and testing the usual Skip player on the value of strong opening play. As usual for this event, a strong contingent of Berkeley bowlers was among the competitors. The BLBC players also turned out to be prominent among the winners.
After the day’s three 10-end games, at the top of the list was Jim Corr, bowling with Micheal McClintock (Santa Clara) in resplendent “Jackson Pollok” shirts. Berkeley dual member, Ian Cameron with partner Tom Burnoski (San Jose) took 4th place, while in 6th and 7th place respectively were the Berkeley duos of Nick Christensen/Daniel Gorelick and Leslie Engler/Sara Allday (the highest placed all-women team). Prize money went down to the 14th position, which was held by Glenn Nunez and Liz Halton (San Francisco) who gallantly stepped up at the last moment to fill in for Berkeley’s Phil Grattan who had to drop out due to illness.
A long day of bowls—but, as always, better than a short day at the office. Congratulations to all the BLBC winning players!
[1] Australian, or more informally, Aussie Pairs is a bowls format that allows both team members to alternate between bowling as Skip and Lead. Sometimes referred to as “2-4-2 bowls,” it encompasses one team member bowling two bowls, followed by the other bowling four, and finally the first team member playing his or her remaining two bowls. Team members then reverse their positions.
BLBC team members:
Good luck today in Rossmoor at the Aussie Pairs Tournament. May your jacks be centered and your aim be true. ❤️
