Thank you Bernadette Chan for your recent photos from the Berkeley Mixed Fives & Aussie Pairs, April 2023
Photos from Mixed Fives & Aussie Pairs, April 2023
Category Archives: Club Members
Membership has its privileges
2023 Howard Mackey Jamboree Winners, 3/18/2023
2023 Howard Mackey Jamboree Winners:
Skips:
1st Place: David Usher (Palo Alto)
2nd Place: Bing (aka Gary) Burns (San Francisco; dual member Berkeley)
3rd Place: Andrew Keeler (San Francisco)
4th Place: John Grimes (San Francisco)
Vices:
1st Place: Lennon Hamilton (Berkeley)
2nd Place: Cris Benton (Berkeley)
3rd Place: Billy Wilson (San Francisco)
4th Place: Luis Zapata (San Francisco; dual member Berkeley)
Leads:
1st Place: Carrie Chiang (San Francisco)
2nd Place: Lydia Zapata (San Francisco; dual member Berkeley)
3rd Place: Mei Chan (San Francisco)
4th Place: Ginger Cheng (Berkeley)
10 very Berkeley date ideas, Berkeleyside, 2/14/2023
Excerpt from Berkeleyside article “10 very Berkeley date ideas”:
“Yes, lawn bowling
Hear us out. This ancient cousin to indoor bowling is an excellent outdoor activity for not-so-perfect weather (Lawn Bowling is enjoyable even under a drizzle). This date idea is also a perfect chance to test your crush’s frustration threshold, as getting the hang of this deceivingly simple-looking game requires patience and good coordination skills. Tucked in the Poet’s Corner in West Berkeley, the bowling green has been part of the city for almost 100 years. For just $5, visitors can play a game. The club offers snacks and soft drinks, but feel free to bring your sandwiches and snacks.”
Ginger Cheng Takes Berkeley Novice Singles Title, 2/4/2023
What a day! What a final! Ginger Cheng takes Berkeley 2022 Novice Singles Title
The 2022 BLBC Novice Singles Tournament—yes, that’s the 2022 event—finally took place on February 4, 2023 after several postponements in December and January due to the welcome but, for bowlers frustrating, winter bomb cyclones and atmospheric rivers that the Bay Area has been subjected to.
Undaunted by the prospect of further inclement weather during the day, 12 eager Novices took to the damp and heavy green and braved a day of cold, wind, and showers—sometimes intense—to show their mettle. (“Fine bowling weather” it’s called in Scotland.) Given the uncertain conditions, a last minute decision was made by the Tournament Team to abjure the usual singles format of playing till a certain number of points is scored and instead to have games run to 15 ends, in the hope that this would expedite play and allow the tournament to be completed on the day.
By random draw, the field of 12 went through three preliminary rounds with only two players emerging as winners of all three of their games. This resulted in a final matchup of Tom Birt and Ginger Cheng, and what a final they gave us.
End for end, bowl for bowl, they assiduously contested every point, with the lead moving back and forth over the course of the match due to excellent shots by each player. On the 15th end, you just knew it would happen, on a beautiful draw Tom seized two points to tie the score, so a last, tie-breaking end had to be played. With Ginger lying shot, Tom had little option but to try a “yard on” with his last bowl. In it came, edging the jack over four feet to where one of his bowls was closest, but before he could celebrate victory his runner continued, nudging Ginger’s bowl just enough to put it a few inches closer to the jack than Tom’s, giving her the game and the 2022 Novice title by a single point. It was a final to grace any tournament, let alone a Novice one.
Thanks are due to many people, not least Tom himself as a “Novice” Tournament Director in difficult circumstances, to all who helped with hospitality and green setup, and especially the veteran bowlers who volunteered their time as markers and who carried on through the on again/off again downpours.
- Report courtesy of Jim Corr
BLBC 2023 Pairs Tournament, 6/17/2023
With an enthusiastic audience of family, recuperating members, and our first-rate hospitality team – augmented by a few curious neighbors and dogs – cheering them on, twenty bowlers took to the Green on Saturday for our club’s first tournament in way too long.
Ten pairs, made up of randomly-matched Skips and Leads with team handicaps ranging from zero to seven, faced off in three, ten-end games with an uncapped differential to determine two finalists. Despite having no handicap points, Hugo Deaux and Luis Zapata steamrolled their way through the preliminaries, emerging as the day’s only undefeated pair.
Three teams, however, finished with 2 and 1 records, but only one could advance. Needing not to lose their last match to Rob Hoey and Leslie Engler by more than two points, Jim Corr and Bernie Chan found themselves down three as the last end was drawing to a close. Unsurprisingly, Jim was able to nudge the jack just close enough to one of Bernie’s well-placed bowls to cut the deficit to two, thus ensuring their place in the finals.
After a slow start against Hugo and Luis, the Corr/Chan duo quickly found a higher gear and cruised to victory, ending the scheduled twelve-end match after only eleven ends. Jim has been on a roll this month, and Bernie showed us all the upside of persistence and lots of practice. Congratulations to you both for a well-deserved win.
Remembering June Browne
Many years ago, June Browne and her husband Howard joined my wife Shelagh and me at an Oakland East Bay Symphony concert that ended with Samuel Barber’s poignant “Adagio for Strings.” The piece begins with one of the more quiet sections in classical music, and at that moment a very loud fight broke out in the back of the Paramount Theater between an usher and a patron. The orchestra and Maestro Morgan soldiered on through the yelling, but then, post-fight, they played the entire piece again. Shortly afterwards, I saw June at the Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club and mentioned the wildness of the night. She focused on the positive: “At least we got to hear the piece twice!” That was June: she did not turn a blind eye to problems, but if something had a silver lining, she resolved to find it.
June passed away this March after an illness and a short spell under hospice. She would have celebrated her 100th birthday in July. Our most senior continuous member, she joined the BLBC in 1988. June and Howard served the club in various ways. For many years, Howy (as he introduced himself) edited the paper version of the club’s “Green Sheet” newsletter. He also provided many photographs at club events, which he cheerfully did with skill. June could be counted on to help set up and clean up at club functions and for many years served on the Memorial and Endowments Fund as a valued trustee. June bowled amiably for many years–always a good sport and good team mate.
As Howard’s health declined from Parkinson’s, June made sure he could still attend events at the club, even as he bowled shorter and fewer games. After Howy died in 2007, June handled the big change in her life with grace and considerable verve. She continued to enjoy concerts, singing in the choir at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, and traveling internationally.
Born in Riverside in 1923, June told me that her father died not long after she was born. Her mother struggled as a single parent, and June learned at an early age that women labored at a disadvantage in the world. The old saying went that for a woman to be considered as good as man, she had to perform twice as well. June did not seem at all daunted or–based on her personal observation–worried by this prospect. Whip smart (her knowledge of art, literature, and science ran impressively wide and deep), canny (as anyone who played poker with her soon found out), and realistic, June used her formidable intellect and resilience in anything she pursued. A proud graduate of UC Berkeley, she earned her degree in chemistry and worked in a lab. She met Howard (she once said about dating Howard, “He was such a good driver, and that impressed me in a young man.”), married him, and they began a family.
With their four sons, they took family trips in a camper and worked on their stunning mid-century modern house in the Kensington hills (she lovingly pointed out parts that Howard, ever the hands-on engineer, built or modified in the house). She created a beautiful garden in the back with fruit trees and flowers that in her later years gave her great pleasure to look upon. She liked that some of the neighborhood cats adopted her–they knew quality.
June launched into her 90’s with an energy that many friends decades younger could only envy. She continued to sing in her choir, she went to shows, she took grandchildren on trips to Europe, she toured with her choir, and she played poker regularly at the BLBC clubhouse. Game for anything!
June liked to entertain. She graciously hosted small events in salon style, and she liked a good conversation about serious things over appetizers and wine. She liked hearing about new things. Some people may have looked at June and thought her a little formal in her way; I never heard her call her husband “Howy,” she always called him “Howard.” She did not seem to care for anything diminutive in things or in people; she preferred everything at full-strength. Any time spent with June after that initial introduction revealed a sincere, curious, and generous person. June liked a good laugh, and her mischievous grin responding to a well-delivered bon mot served as quite a reward.
We at the Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club will miss June. But mostly we will fondly remember her time with the club and the times she worked and played with us. We offer our condolences to her family, and thank them for sharing June with us for 35 years.
Sunday Morning Lawn Bowling, 2023
Early Sunday morning risers … please join us on Sundays from 10 AM to 12 Noon for draw games or for lessons
Photos taken 1/22/2023
PIMD 2022 McLaren Rotational Triples, 8/27/2022
Photographs courtesy of Bernadette Chan
BLBC 2022 Pairs Tournament, 10/22/2022
BLBC 2022 Pairs Culminates in Dramatic Final
The Club’s 2022 Pairs Tournament was held on Saturday, October 2022 and featured eight teams, first playing a series of three randomly-drawn 10-end games. The two top teams from that round went forward into a 10-end final. Teams had been formed by a random matching of Skips with Leads and had been handicapped based on the combined handicap of Skip and Lead.
Only one team—Gary “Bing” Burns and Gordon Beveridge—emerged from the prelims with three wins, while three others had won two of their three matches. Of the latter, Chris Davis and Sarah Allday moved on to the final through having the best differential among the tied second place teams.
And what a final it was! A delight to the assembled spectators. Starting out with a net handicap in this matchup of +5 and taking three shots on the first end, Gary and Gordon looked in a formidable position. But Chris and Sarah were not giving in that easily and fought their way back into the match to tie it up at 9-9 on the eight end. Both teams were bowling really well, drawing continuous applause from the peanut gallery for shot after excellent shot, a particularly spectacular one being from Gary to slip in on the 9th end with his last bowl and take away Sarah’s point that was sitting less than two inches from the jack. The perfectly executed draw slowed as it drew in and curved just so to nestle an inch behind the jack. But the undaunted Davis/Allday team were not yet out and grabbed a single point on the 10th end to tie the game.
A 1-end bowl-off determined the winners. Chris and Sarah were now on a roll and put in great shots to win by three points and thereby emerge as 2022 Pairs Champions.
Congratulations Chris and Sarah and thanks to all the participants for a fine day of bowling, to the hospitality crew of Sarah and Rolayn for vittles, and, as always, to our Greenskeeper Annie for what must currently be the fastest natural cover green in the PIMD.
– Report courtesy of Jim Corr
Rossmoor Challenge, 11/5/2022
The “Allende El Cerro” Trophy Goes to the Other Side of the Hill
They say “better late than never,” but when the news is not so good, maybe it’s not so good. Anyhoosies, with apologies for the delay to those of you not already aware, we lost the annual challenge match to Rossmoor LBC on Saturday, November 5.
We fielded six triples teams for a morning and afternoon game, but sadly only managed two wins on either side of lunch. Rumor has it that the Rossmoor folks were riled up by your humble correspondent holding up the trophy at announcements time, urging our hosts to take a good look, as some of them had never seen it before. (Berkeley had won the preceding four years in a row.) Lesson learned.
The trophy titled “Allende El Cerro” translates as “Over the Hill” to some people—a bit too close to the bone for me, with its whiff of an implication that lawn bowls is a sport for geezers. “On the other side of the hill” is a perfectly good alternative.
Riled or not, our Rossmoor colleagues were ever gracious and laid on a very nice lunch with hamburgers, veggie burgers, and hot links with all the fixings and then some, served up by grillmaster Ozzie Ozorio. We thank them and look forward to next year’s match-up here at home when we anticipate the trophy will return to this side of the hill!
– Report courtesy of Jim Corr