2008 North America Challenge Results

The tournament was held Aug 7-9 at the Burlington Lawn Bowls Club in Ontario, Canada.

In this event, each country has a Folkins men's team and a Folkins women's team, and a Jarvis men's team and a Jarvis women's team. Each squad bowls six games over three days, three games of Fours and Singles, and three of Triples and Pairs.

There are seven trophies to be awarded at the North American Challenge, namely: Men's Folkins, Men's Jarvis, Women's Folkins, Women's Jarvis, Overall Folkins, Overall Jarvis and Overall NAC. Team USA won the Women's Jarvis Trophy and the Overall Jarvis Trophy. The remainder of the trophies were won by Canada.

By Trevor Colby, Editor Lawn Bowls Magazine

The US Jarvis ladies accepting their trophy

The US Team for the North American Challenge

One of Canada's teams in action

The Women's Team Selectors for 2008

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CONGRATULATIONS...

....to Mert Isaacman and Loren Dion who have been invited to compete in this year's Hong Kong Invitational Bowls Classic, playing in Singles and Pairs in early December. Both players have accepted the invitation. We wish them the best of luck in the competition.

Applications for the 2009 Men's Team USA

The National Team Selectors (NTS) will be selecting several teams for the 2009 International Calendar of events. If you applied last year, you should receive your application forms via email sometime in the late summer along with a calendar of the events for whch the USA is eligible. If you did not apply last year see instructions below for contacting Jack Lucey.

Form A in the Application package will contain instructions for completing the application. If possible, we would appreciate an electronic application to facilitate the turnaround time and points calculations that can be done automatically on electronic forms. However, in order to do so, it will require a specifically worded email accompaniment to replace the waiver form.

If you need hard copy forms, please contact Jack (see below), and hard copies will be mailed to you. For manually prepared forms, legibility counts. Type or write with black ink, because your forms will need to be photocopied and sent to the other Selectors. Your applications will remain confidential.

Please mail the completed forms to Jack Lucey at the address below, to reach Jack on or before Oct 1, 2008. You may phone him with questions at 617-376-2509 any time before 10 PM Eastern Time, or contact him at:

USA Wins The Gold

People travel to China for various reasons. Some to see such wonders as the Great Wall, see an emerging nation, or perhaps cruise the Yangtze to see the new Three Gorges Dam.

Others travel to China (Hong Kong) to play in the well known China Open lawn bowling tournament. Well, that's what TEAM USA did. The went to play and to WIN and WIN they did. Competing from March 4 - 7 were 28 nations including Scotland, Canada, England, Australia (2 teams), and Wales just to name a few.

The team included Bob Schneider (Skip), Chris Booth (Vice), Richard Broad (third and team captain), and Bill Brault (Lead).

The team went 5-1-1 in the section round-robin which included defeating Australia 2 and England. After winning the quarter and semi finals they faced Australia 1 for the gold. They won over Australia 1 handily by a score of 15 to 10 bringing an international gold medal to the United States for the first time in 24 years. Further, they did it without having a team manger to handle the details.

We might add that before the China Open, Chris Booth won a gold medal in the Hong Kong International Mixed Fours. That's two golds for Chris in a matter of days. Can anyone tell us the last time a TEAM USA member brought home two gold medals?