NEWS PHOTO RYAN MCCRACKEN
Linda Bower bowls in the Medicine Hat Lawn Bowling Club's yardstick tournament on Sunday, Aug. 25, 2019.
rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com@MHNMcCracken
The Medicine Hat Lawn Bowling Club welcomed a few teams from Lethbridge for a yardstick tournament on Sunday afternoon – offering players a unique spin on the classic game.
Club secretary Curt Moll says all bowls within a yard of the jack are scored in a yardstick tournament, which changes up the strategy while paving the way for some seriously high scoring games.
“The scoring in lawn bowling is exactly the way they score it in curling -where the closest bowl would get the points. In this one, all the balls that are within one yard of the jack, or the target, get points. So both teams get points in this one,” he said. “Instead of setting up guards a lot of the time and that kind of stuff, you’re just trying to get within that yard of the jack. If the opponent has a lot of balls in there, then you can try to knock the jack out of the way and reduce the number of points that they get.”
Mother-daughter duo Ina and Lori Lutz ended up taking home the yardstick title Sunday after defeating Wes and Jean Bresee 84-79 in a wild finale. Both the Lutz’s and Bresee’s finished the round robin with a perfect 3-0 record. Robert Rodzniak’s group from Lethbridge settled for third after finishing the group stage at 2-1. The top three squads left with a yardstick signed by competitors from all 10 teams.
It’s been a summer to remember for the local club. Moll says hosting the Alberta 55-Plus Summer Games and a provincial tournament, as well as a number of other well attended events has drawn more eyes to a club. As a result, membership has been climbing.
“We’re just really busy the whole summer this year. It’s really good that people are starting to find out about us and give us a try,” said Moll. “We’ve had a lot of interest. Our membership just hit 62 people. We had 20 more people than we had last year. There’s really a generally good vibe around here. We’re doing a lot of in-house tournaments this year and all our tournaments have been really well attended. The one provincial tournament we had was really well attended by Edmonton clubs and our club did really well. We’re having a lot of people show up on Wednesday, that’s kind of our big night, and we also have a lot of families and staff and corporate groups coming to use the building for rentals.”
The Medicine Hat Lawn Bowling Club will close out its season with a triples tournament next month.
