DON’T PANIC!! You haven’t missed the start of the bowls season but it isn’t that far off! We have already started thinking about what we are going to do this year.

Junior Section Opening Day – Friday 20th April

The Junior Section Friday sessions will officially start on Friday 20th April at 4.30pm. We are hoping to organise something special for the session, although we are not sure exactly what at the moment, but we will make sure it will be a lot of fun! Some of the ideas include perhaps having a barbecue and starting off with some fun competitions. Whatever we do it will be a little different from the usual ongoing Friday sessions.

Club Open Day – Sunday 13th May

This is not the same as the Junior Section Opening Day but it is a day to let people of all ages have a go at playing bowls. Some of you may have had your first go at playing bowls at the Open Day last year. If you know of anyone who wants to come along, young or old, and have a go please tell them about our Open Day. And if you want to come down and have a go yourself then we won’t stop you!

Of course, it goes without saying, that if you have any friends or relations that might be interested in playing bowls then please bring them down anytime – just let us know.

Membership Renewal Forms

We are hoping that everyone who joined us last year will join us again this year. Membership renewal forms will be emailed to your parents before the season starts and there will continue to be no junior membership fee. However, we will be asking for a £1 session fee every week again this year to include refreshments, but we will ask you to pay the £1 fee regardless of whether you stay on for refreshments or not this year. This is so we can generate more funds for the Junior Section to purchase more equipment – bowls, shoes etc. ALL of your session fees go towards purchasing Junior Section equipment.

On the membership form there will also be the opportunity to enter Club competitions. Please see more about this below.

Club Competitions

We are going to run several Junior Club competitions this year in addition to the ‘Points’ competition that went so well last year. There will be the opportunity to enter these on the Membership Renewal form, although everybody will be included in the ‘Junior Points Competition’which we will continue to run on a weekly basis.

This year we will also have a Junior Singles Championship and a Junior Pairs Championship, with a £1 entry fee for each competition. There will be trophies up for grabs as well as the chance of being known as the Club Junior Champion! The finer details are still to be worked out but we are hoping that all of you can enter and we will sort out the rest!

Other Competitive Opportunities

All of our juniors will be given the chance to play in the Carlton House/Mike Smith Trophy again this year. We think it worked very well last year, with six of you competing.

Some of you may even feel brave enough to play in club friendly matches against other clubs. These matches are open to ALL members and, as you are club members, this means YOU! These matches are very relaxed with the emphasis on competitive fun but they are a great way to develop your bowling skills.

We will set out how you can play in these matches in the next newsletter.

This Year’s coaches

We are hoping to have the same team of coaches and helpers as last year – Geoff, Dave H, John, Rory, Dave W, Rowland, Roy and Dean - who all did such a wonderful job of not only helping to set up the Junior Section but also in keeping it going and developing the skills of all of our young bowlers. We were also grateful to the huge assistance of some parents last year and we will be grateful for any help again this year.

All we ask is that you, in turn, support all of our coaches and helpers!

Shirts

We WILL be having special Junior Section club shirts this year. We still have to sort out how we are going to distribute them but be assured that when we play other clubs nobody will doubt that we are the Mighty Olney Bowling Club!

Equipment

We haven’t been hibernating over the winter and have been working to improve our stock of equipment, particularly sets of bowls and, as can be seen above, club shirts. Besides acquiring more sets of bowls we have also applied for money from Tesco through their token scheme. We are still awaiting the outcome of this application but we are hopeful of being successful, which will mean more sets of bowls, bowling shoes, lockers for the equipment and more. We will keep you posted!

Skills Awards

This is something we have been thinking about for a long time. We want to create an award scheme that recognises the skills you have gained and how well you can play. We see it involving earning certificates at various levels – Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. It will be something that you aim for at every session and get a sense of achievement. It is our plan to unveil the scheme at the Junior Section Opening Day.

Other News

We are still to find out if the County Junior Academy will be continuing and what plans the Buckinghamshire Bowling Association have for the County’s Juniors. However, it is our intention to organise matches against other clubs and to invite clubs over to our green to play in a competition. You fantastically supported all of these events last year and we will keep you updated about these competitive opportunities this year.

Thanks for reading. See you all on the green in April!!

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