​Kyleakin Indoor Bowling  Club

It is with enormous sadness that I pass on the news that Donald Adams died at home yesterday following a recurrence of cancer. I consider myself privileged to have met and all-too-briefly known this true gentleman, to have enjoyed his company and his sense of humour. I shall think of you and your grin, Donald, every time I get a little "wickie".

I don't as yet know the arrangements for Donald's funeral, though I'm sure that word of that will quickly get around the Kyleakin players. If I am unable to attend through being away for part of this coming week, I will still be there in spirit.

David.

The SLLBA bowling league reached a nail biting conclusion in mid March. With defending champions Kyleakin having completed their fixtures, both Kintail and Plockton looked like either might pip Kyleakin at the post. Although Plockton could equal Kyleakin’s points total, there was a large gulf in shots difference, meaning Plockton needed to win their remaining two games by substantial margins. With Kintail drawing and Plockton winning their penultimate matches, the final fixture, Plockton v Kintail, was potentially a winner takes all. Kintail needed a win to clinch their first League championship title but it was being played at Plockton where playing conditions and carpets are notoriously difficult. This didn’t seem to bother the visitors and with an end to go they were three shots to the good overall. However with the last bowl of the league season, Plockton skip Geoff Harrington played a fantastic shot to remove Kintail's shot bowl and move the jack to win with a count of five. So it was another nail-biting end to a competitive league campaign, seeing Kyleakin somehow securing another title. With Kintail pushing Kyleakin very closely over the last few seasons, and Plockton also coming close, no one would have begrudged Kintail’s Roddy Gillies the glory of his club taking the honours, considering all the work he has put into his club and also as secretary with the SLLBA. There's always next year Roddie!

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The final SLLBA competition of the season was the Triples, with a large turnout. A good day's bowling resulted in Kyleakin's Dave Harrigan, Donald Adams and Heather Harrigan taking on stablemates Chris Mackinnon, Lennie Chiffers and Jill Mackinnon in the final. Dave had beaten Kintail's Roddy Gillies in the semi and Chris Mackinnon's triple had put out clubmate Ian Sikorski's three, so the final was set for a ding-dong encounter. It didn’t quite turn out that way with Chris’s triple just proving too strong on the day.

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The final open competition of the season saw the usual exodus of bowlers from Kyleakin, Kintail, Lochcarron, Kyle and Mallaig to the championships in Stonehaven. Most triples got through the round robin stages, with Kyleakin’s Roddy Morrison, Rose Mary Finnie, and Sandra Dew joining clubmates Ian Sikorski, John Govier, and John Booth in the latter stages before exiting. Also doing well was Kintail's Craig Cummings, Ian Grimmer and Ann Lloyd, reaching the quarter final.

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The Pairs competition was played the following day with again most of the west coast contingent getting through to the knockout stages of the main competition, with those who didn’t qualify going through to the consolation pairs. Again some good performances were produced with the best showing coming from Kyleakin’s Jill Mackinnon who partnered Dumfries’s Laurence Moffat in battling through to the Final and beating Aberdeen's Walter Bruce and Dumfries’s Paul Geddes. In the consolation section Kintail's Roddy Gillies and Lochcarron’s Bart McFleat won the final.

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Chris Mackinnon

Barely home from representing Scotland in the European Championships, Dave Harrigan was in fine form, winning his group and then beating Korky in his semi-final. Runner up in Dave's group, David McHutchison, scraped through his semi against John Booth but was unable to cope with Dave Harrigan's consistent and accurate bowling. So, it's hearty congratulations to Dave Harrigan for winning our monthly medal this month.

Congratulations to us! Kyleakin finished as winners of the SLLBA league for 2014-15 but only just!

Hearty congratulations to Chris MacKinnon, Jill MacKinnon, and Lennie Chiffers on becoming the 2015 Champions. They got through the day unbeaten to reach the final against Dave & Heather Harrigan and Donald Adams. The first few ends were tight, going with Dave's team, but some inspired bowling from Chris to consolidate the fine work of his team saw them take three big winning ends and take an unassailable lead.

Geoff Harrington won his group to meet the other group's dominant player, Dave Harrigan, in the final. Dave got off to a strong start with a 3 shot lead after end 1 and looked very much like he would continue his dominant play but Geoff fought back quickly: 2 shots in the second then 3 more in the third. With Dave needing at least 2 in the fourth and final end, Geoff applied the pressure quickly and made that virtually impossible. Well done Geoff, a well desrved win!

Last Saturday brought us a day of beautiful sunny weather which, unfortunately for them, SLLBA bowlers could only admire briefly between their matches. Yes, it was the gathering of friends old and new at the Kyleakin Community Hall for the 2015 SLLBA Pairs Championship.

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With four 9ft carpets in use and 21 pairs playing, carpet 1 had six pairs while the remaining three carpets each had five. The luck of the draw worked against Kyleakin, putting no less than four of their pairs into the carpet 1 "group of death". Even with an end less per match, carpet 1 matches overran so the final two were moved to vacant carpets. With results in this group so tight and three matches now playing simultaneously, tension built. Even until the final bowl it was still unkown which two pairs would progress. That final bowl won a close match for Ian Sikorski and John Govier, seeing them through to the knockout stage along with the pair they had just defeated, Chris MacKinnon and Kenny MacPherson. Kenny's return from Ireland to play with his old pairs partner had surprised many of us. He and Chris played very well throughout the group stage,  so Ian and John's hard fought win over them had not seemed too likely.

Carpet 4 had also proved to be extremely tight with several drawn matches and the qualifiers decided with a calculator. This saw Roddy MacKerlich and Kevin Lawley progress as group winners, with the ever cheerful Donald Adams and Simon MacKenzie taking the runner-up spot. On carpet 2 the Geoff Stoddart pair progressed with group winners Roddy Gillies and Craig Cummings, while on carpet 3 the new pairing of young Gavin Finnie and newcomer David McHutchison surprised many by qualifying undefeated. The runner-up spot, though, was again highly contested, with Ian Grimmer's pair securing the final knockout place.

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It was a short reprieve for Ian's pair as they fell victim to the steam-rollering Chris & Kenny, while the other "group of death" combatants, Ian & John, put a firm end to Gavin & David's run of wins. The Roddy MacKerlich and Roddy Gillies pairs fought through to the semi-finals but then met each other, with Roddy MacKerlich winning the battle of "the two Roddies". The second semi was an all Kyleakin affair which saw a second victory on the day for Korky & Sarge over defending champions Chris and Kenny.

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The final began well for Korky and Sarge but over the next 3 ends Roddy and Kevin nibbled away at their lead and then delivered a devastating 3 shot winning end to leave them 3 ahead with just 2 ends to go. Two brave singles were not enough to overturn that so Roddy and Kevin hung on to finish as the pairs champions for 2015. Congratulations to them, and especially to Kevin who has been so close so often in recent competitions.

Despite a crunching 10-0 loss to Lennie Chiffers and a hard-fought draw with Chris MacKinnon during the group stage, new club member David McH (nobody can spell his name) somehow got through the group stage as runner up, aided by an outrageous bit of luck in his last end against Roddy Morrison. Chris MacKinnon dominated to advance as group winner in spite of suffering from a nasty bug throughout the previous week. Meanwhile Jill MacKinnon and Dave Harrigan got through from the other half of the draw in which an early domination by Sandra Dew fizzled out. She must have been thinking too much about getting home to a warm fire and a glass of wine!

The semi-final draw put the winner and runner up from each group back in against each other, with Dave H beating Jill and a sloppy final end somehow letting David McH sneak a win over Chris.

The final swung one way then the other, and Dave H went into the last end with a 4-3 lead. A tight cluster of bowls gave David McH a shot to draw level, and an extremely close measure for the possibility of a second shot, which eventually was awarded to David to win the match by the narrowest of margins.

Whoever was it who first said, "I'd rather be lucky than good"?!

(Actually, it may have been Lefty Gomez, the 1930s Yankees baseball player.)

The very best of luck to all those going down to Dumfries for the Scottish Championships next weekend.

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David McH.

An entry of 38 competitors gave us 6 groups: 4 carpets of 6 players (6 ends per match) and 2 carpets of 7 players (5 ends per match), so it was a long and busy day. Last year's winner, Jill MacKinnon, somehow managed to juggle playing her matches with running the back-room scoring - quite a task.

Most of the usual suspects qualified for the final 16 but eventually they were whittled down to finalists Chris MacKinnon and Kevin Lawley. Chris had not played well early on but his game improved as the day passed, and by the final he was in scintillating form, winning with an end to spare to keep the trophy in the family for another year.

Photographs from this competition are available for club members to view and use. Please just ask to borrow the DVD from Chris. 

The Morrison Triples, sponsored by Roddy Morrison of Kyleakin, was again very successfully run in our hall in Kyleakin, with 14 teams involved. Roddy and his team of Sandra Dew and Rose-Mary Finnie reached the final, only to be beaten by the superb Kintail team of Winky Stoddart, Craig Cummings, and Roddy Gillies.

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Photographs from this competition are available for club members to view and use. Please just ask to borrow the DVD from Chris.