Pacific Inter-Mountain Division of Bowls USA
BLBC Pres. Ashok Verma to BLBCers on 5/20/2024:
Please join me in extending our heartiest congratulations to Janie Hillyer and Jim Corr for winning the Pacific Inter-mountain Division (PIMD) Singles women’s and men’s title at the Rossmoor LBC. We now have two champions who will be representing the PIMD clubs at the National Championships in Milwaukee. The National Championships will be held at Milwaukee Lake park LBC in September 2024.
From Bud Birkenseer, PIMD Tournament Director on 4/15/2024:
Congratulations to Bernadette and HC for winning the PIMD mixed pairs!
What a journey, rain, wind, the party’s ON the party is OFF. The wind stopped then blew again, but the games went ON.
Thanks everyone, I appreciate that you ALL made it to the Club and ON TIME.
I saw some very nice shots made over the day. Very impressive considering most of you couldn’t feel your fingers.
Congrats to our Champions!
HC Yung and Bernadette Chan who went undefeated and had a differential of 19 points
The runners up John and Angie Peet also went undefeated, but their differential missed the mark by a few points.
Four teams won money, and we had an added donation to the prize pool! Thank you to our unnamed donor.
I am sure the winners will find a way to spend that extra cash.
I just don’t want our PIMD bowlers to expect these large prize money amounts in ALL our PIMD tournaments!!
(Thank you mystery donor!)
“… and Annie makes two!”
BLBC Pres. Glenn Nunez to BLBCers on 7/10/2023:
We’ve all known that Annie Brillhart has made a business of taking care OF the green, but she’s also quite capable of taking care of business ON the green as well.
Yesterday, Annie carried BLBC’s flag to San Francisco for the PIMD Women’s Singles Playdowns to determine its representative for the 2023 U.S. National Championships. It was a one-day, round-robin, winner-take-all event and Annie’sfirst game was, as they say, “a real nail biter.” She quickly found herself down 7-0 to the eventual runner-up before rallying to an even position a dozen points in. From there the two women traded winning shots until they came to the ultimate end tied 17-17. That’s where Annie, in her own words, “snuck one on the jack” and then waited nervously to see if it would hold for the victory. It did. A couple of observers remarked that it was among the best games they’d ever witnessed. Annie then handily won her final two matches, emerging as the day’s only undefeated competitor and punching her ticket to Florida.
With Jim Corr’s matching honors from last month’s Men’s Playdowns, BLBC can now proudly lay claim to having BOTH of our division’s singles participants in this fall’s prestigious event in Florida. Annie and Jim are superb bowlers and we’re extremely pleased for – and proud of – both of them!
Congratulations, Annie. You’ve put in the work over the years, so you’ve earned this reward. Best of luck in Sun City!
“Jim Corr is going to Florida!”
BLBC Pres. Glenn Nunez to BLBCers on 6/11/2023:
I just got word from my inside sources at Rossmoor that our very own Jim Corr has won the Men’s Singles section of the PIMD Playdowns and will be representing our division at this year’s U.S. National Championships in Sun City, Florida from October 29th to November 4th. Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club could not be any prouder!
This event started last weekend, as fourteen entrants were whittled down to the six who would come back yesterday to begin a two-day, five-match round robin. Jim took care of business Saturday, winning all three of his 21 point matches. He dropped his first match this morning, but came back to win his second with a few points to spare. A nail-biting wait followed as he watched the remaining two bowlers battle to a 19-19 deadlock before everything fell the right way on their final end, guaranteeing that our hero would be the only competitor to wind up four and one over the two days. Jim had booked his ticket!
Those of you who have watched Jim over the past several years know this is no fluke. Even after all his experience, he continues to practice and work hard on the physical aspects of his game. On the equally important mental side, he’s always thinking about the nuances of each situation he finds himself facing, weighing the pros and cons of every shot selection. His even temper serves him well, as he never gets overconfident while simultaneously never beating himself up should things go awry. If you’re looking for someone to emulate on the green, here’s your man.
Jim, we’re all extremely happy for you. Best of luck in Florida.
Score with Corr!!
Thank you Bernadette Chan for your recent photos from the Berkeley Mixed Fives & Aussie Pairs, April 2023
Photographs courtesy of Bernadette Chan
PIMD 2022 Singles—Dual Venue Tests the Field
The PIMD Singles Tournament was held over two Saturdays (July 9 and July 16) at two clubs: first, at San Francisco LBC, followed by the final rounds at Berkeley.
Twenty-four competitors, both men and women, started out at SF, and after three matches played to 16 points, a top 12 emerged, three players having three wins: Chris Davies (Berkeley), Jim Corr (Berkeley) and Scottie Marzonie (Palo Alto,) and nine having a record of two wins, one loss.
On the succeeding Saturday, with all games played to 18 points, the top six bowlers from the SF rounds were first randomly matched against the bottom six. The two later rounds were played on a “winner v winner” basis. After two matches, the final contests were set with Jim Corr facing Andrew Keeler (San Francisco) for top spot and Jesse May (Santa Cruz) against Chris Davies at that point in third and fourth place. In the Corr-Keeler matchup, Andrew jumped into an early lead to go up 10-3 at one point, but, mainly through getting hold of the jack more often, Jim managed to switch play to a short jack game and dominated the second half. Four points for Jim on the 16th end tied the game at 15-15, and in the next end he took another three to snatch victory and the 2022 Singles title.
The other top match was equally hard fought, with Jesse overcoming Chris by 18-14, which vaulted Jess to second place overall in the standings. Andrew finished third, edging out Aumao To’alepaialii (Santa Cruz) by a single differential point over the three matches of the day.
Congratulations to all who were “in the money” (a total of eight players) and thanks, as always, to PIMD Tournament Director Bud Birkenseer for the hours he put in to overseeing the tourney. And a big shout out to the Berkeley hospitality crew as well as to newly (re)-appointed greenskeeper, Annie Brillhart for producing a fine playing surface at short notice.
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.
Happy Mother’s Day from BLBC and the participants at yesterday’s Berkeley Jamboree! Kudos to Hugo Deaux, the awesome Tournament Director!
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.
