Teens bowl over senior competition

Finbar Mc Guligan,14, Bradley Down,16, and Seamus Curtin,14, (playing) compete at Browns Bay yesterday. Photo / Greg Bowker

Seamus Curtin, 14, was among a group of Wellington teenagers who shattered any notion that bowls is a game solely for the aged and infirm.

Playing in the men's singles qualifying rounds at Browns Bay yesterday at the national bowls championships, were Curtin, his Plimmerton club-mates Finbar McGuigan, also 14 and Bradley Down, 16, and from the Johnsonville club, Lachlan Gordon, 19.

Despite worthy efforts by all four, Curtin was the star turn, qualifying by winning three of his four matches to become perhaps the youngest bowler ever to make the national championships' post-section play.

Last season Curtin, aged 13, partnered Gordon to win the Wellington centre's open pairs title.

Down and McGuigan have all succeeded with club titles, while Down won last season's Wellington champion of champions junior singles title.

In just his fifth year playing the game, Curtin, with McGuigan and Down, has been part of a bowls' coaching programme at Porirua's Aotea College initiated by Curtin's mother, Rachel Wybourne-Curtin.

She and husband Con began bowling together 12 years ago and encouraged Seamus and his mates to join in, in the belief that bowls was an excellent family sport.

Wybourne-Curtin says the teenagers have all fitted in well in the environment, despite being invariably among many of more mature years.

Wybourne-Curtin says one of her primary aims with the teenagers has been instilling mental strength, a quality Seamus emphasised yesterday when he clinched his post-section place with a perfect draw bowl.