National Stories - 18 Players Qualify from Huntly BC!
Huntly Bowling Club in District 2 have an incredible 18 players through to final stages of the Bowls Scotland National Championships.
The National Finals will take place at the National Centre for Bowling, Ayr between Sunday 21st July – Saturday 27th July and there will be plenty of players and supporters making the long journey from the North East for the annual event.
Over the week there will be national champions crowned for 2019 in singles, pairs, triples, rinks, senior singles, senior rinks, and under 25 singles in the gents and ladies’ categories along with mixed pairs as well. This means that one single club can have a possible total of 34 players that qualify for the National Finals, if they are successful in every discipline and win five or even six games in their district qualifiers.
However, this feat is highly unlikely and nearly an impossible task for any club in the country due to the high quality of competition in the district qualifiers for the National Championships. This demonstrates Huntly BC’s brilliant achievement of successfully managing to get 18 different players to qualify for the National Finals on the South West coast.
Amongst the 18 players from Huntly BC, there are four married couples and three generations of the one family – proving that bowls really is a sport for everyone!
Huntly Bowling Club’s secretary, Jim Gordon, is delighted with his club’s success. He said: “It’s a tremendous achievement for the club and certainly in my time I have never heard of that sort of number of players qualifying for the National Championships from one club.”
Jim continued: “Many members of the club have got their travel arrangements and accommodation sorted for travelling to Ayr so that they can get behind everyone that has qualified. We have also spoken to quite a few of the surrounding clubs, that are usually good supporters of the Championships anyway, but there are certainly more people from the local area interested in going along to the National Finals to give us all the support they can.”
Jacqueline Green, Huntly Bowling Club’s President, said: “I’m pretty certain that there has never been any National Champions from Huntly BC. Our gents’ fours got a silver medal in 2017 so it would be great if one of the teams that are through to the National Finals this year could go one better and bring back a gold medal to our club."
Congratulations to everyone from Huntly BC and we look forward to seeing you all at the National Championships!
