LAWN BOWLS RENAISSANCE
Young World Cup medallist from B.C. leads movement to make sport hip
Lawn bowls history is said to date back to the 13th century. But to suggest you can still find a few of the sport’s pioneers out on the greens of any club you happen to walk by is just an easy joke that perpetuates the prevailing stereotype.
You know the one, the widely held belief that it’s really just a relaxing social activity for geezers and grey hairs.
Now, it’s true that the vast majority of the membership at clubs in B.C. and across the country is represented by those 55 and older. A recent survey of the province’s clubs, in which 27 of 51 reported, showed that of the 4,395 Bowls BC members, 92 per cent were 55 plus, while just 48 were 25 or under.
But there is a concerted effort underway in this province, as there is around the world, to get more young people involved. And at the highest competitive levels — Commonwealth Games and various world championships conducted by World Bowls — it is a sport that often skews younger with the emphasis on hand-eye coordination, stamina and mental acuity.
In bowls, players roll balls alone or as part of a pairs, triples or fours team to a smaller jack. The balls are unevenly weighted, so they curl as they slow down.
Pricilla Westlake of Delta is a rising bowls star, someone who is quickly making her mark in a sport once seen as the domain of doddering grandparents in starched white uniforms.
The 20-year-old Kwantlen University journalism student and devotee of mixed martial arts fitness classes earned a bronze medal in women’s singles at last month’s World Cup at Warilla in New South Wales, Australia. It matches the best Canadian finish at the annual indoor competition since Vancouver’s Shirley Choy captured gold in 2006.
It was the first big senior international event for the multiple-time B.C. and Canadian junior champ. In preliminary-round play, Westlake, displaying maturity and poise beyond her years, stunned Siti Zalina Ahmad of Malaysia, the defending champion and two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist, and also defeated top-ranked Australian Carla Krizanic.
Westlake faced Ahmad again in the semifinals and had the 37-yearold policewoman down 3-0 after one end of the three-end tiebreaker after they had split the first two sets. But she couldn’t hold on, losing 5-3 on a dramatic last shot from Ahmad.
Ahmad went on to lose the final to 61-year-old Norfolk Islander Carmen Anderson, the 1996 world champion, demonstrating there are still some oldies, but goodies, at the elite level.
“It’s a very significant achievement,” Anna Mees, executive director of Bowls Canada, said of Westlake reaching the podium. “It demonstrated the hard work and training she has put into the game.
“Canada is taking a new approach to lawn bowling, similar to what curling is doing. We’re taking our national squad and putting them through a physiological training program, with psychological and mental training as well.
“It’s a pretty new phenomenon to bowls worldwide. Canada, I would say, if I can blow our horn a little bit, is a little ahead of the curve, in large part due to the great work of Sport Canada and the Canadian sport for life movement. Our athletes have really bought into it.”
Interviewed by email from Australia, where she is competing at the world Under-25 championships in Broadbeach, Queensland, Westlake said it was “an absolute honour and a privilege to play (in the World Cup) against and amongst some of the world’s best players.”
“It was a great experience for me. I am still considered fairly young to have medalled at the World Cup. I’m super ecstatic.”
Adopted out of Papua New Guinea at age five by Barbara Westlake, Pricilla and her mother are making the most of their month-long sojourn in Australia by including a five-day side trip to the small Pacific Island nation. It is her first trip back and she is expected to make contact with her birth mom’s family.
Stephen Forrest, who runs the Bowls BC athlete development program and who coached Westlake as a teenager, says she’s a “very, very talented player.
“It’s a sport that requires superb hand-eye coordination, balance, athletic ability, having the ability to adjust throws by half-an-inch over a playing surface that runs 100 feet. That’s not given to everybody, but she’s got it. To be able to deliver all that when you’re mentally under pressure … I’m very, very impressed.”
Westlake failed to advance out of the preliminary round at the world juniors at Broadbeach in 2015. But with some experience under her belt at the outdoor venue where afternoon winds can be challenging, and with the confidence gained from her World Cup experience, Westlake believes she’s capable of big things.
“I’m super excited and I am feeling much more prepared to fight for a medal,” said Westlake, who will be joined at Broadbeach by Jaymee Sidel of Victoria and three other young Canadians.
It was Westlake’s grandmother, Margaret, who got her started in the sport at the Tsawwassen Lawn Bowling Club. When Pricilla medalled at the U-18 provincials in 2009 as a 13-year-old she was instantly hooked.
“The appeal of bowls for me is how it’s never the same each game and it is surprisingly difficult,” she said by email. “But I absolutely love the challenges, so this sport is wonderful for me.”
Making it wonderful for others of her generation is the big challenge, even in the sport’s hotbeds like Australia, where there are more than 250,000 registered players at 2,000 clubs, New Zealand, the U.K. and Asia.
Rules have been relaxed to allow for more casual clothing — board shorts, track suits, skorts for girls, etc. And in some places, the traditional black balls have been replaced by ones that are fluorescent pink, green, orange and yellow.
Australia has also had huge success over the last five years with the introduction of barefoot bowls. Ca-
It’s a pretty new phenomenon to bowls worldwide. Canada ... is a little ahead of the curve, in large part due to the great work of Sport Canada and the Canadian sport for life movement.
sual weekend games played barefoot and with a drink not far away have attracted large numbers of hip twenty-somethings to clubs all around that country and breathed new life into a sport that was starting to decline.
Tim Mason, marketing and sport advancement coordinator for Bowls BC, said changing the mindset of long-established clubs in this province has been difficult because “you’re dealing with an old guard. Change can only happen when you want it to.”
Even something as simple as getting clubs to deliver that survey online was challenging. “Some were asking, ‘What do you mean I can’t just send it in on paper?’”
“One of the first things I did (after taking over as president of the West Vancouver Lawn Bowling Club four years ago) was to get a flatscreen TV and Internet into the clubhouse. If you want young people coming to the club, you’ve got to know they’re going to want to be on their iPhone, be on the web.”
It’s not all about increasing actual membership, he said, noting that the recent survey showed there were another 6,000 people who participate recreationally or through charity tournaments, or events like the Mayor’s Tournament he started in West Van.
“We have to be open to people coming in off the street, where you might have a drop-in fee or something like that,” said Mason, a Penetanguishene, Ont., native who was briefly a minor pro hockey player.
He got into bowls more than a decade ago when he stumbled upon some bowlers in West Vancouver while in search of a new gym after moving to B.C.
A quick study and now a passion ate advocate for the sport, Mason has a silver medal and three bronze from the Asia Pacific Championships and was a member of Canada’s 2014 Commonwealth Games team. He has been the driving force behind a schools program modelled after Curling Canada’s Rocks and Rings, a program that goes into elementary school gyms with specially designed equipment to help introduce youngsters to the sport. It’s a very basic bowls program, simply setting up pylons and targets that help youngsters understand how the biased bowls curve when thrown.
The response has been encouraging, says Mason, particularly when he can get a young person like Westlake into one of the schools.
“The power of the program isn’t a 65- or 70-year-old going into a high school. It’s getting somebody like Pricilla going into the school at 20 and explaining to them this is what you do, this is how you hold it. They can relate.”