BNZ Summerset 2025 National Championship report.

   It was another frustrating loss for the best performed North Harbour player in the 2025 Bowls New Zealand Summerset Nationals, Bowls North Harbour’s Wendy Jensen, when she went down 21-17 to Waikato’s Debbie White in the women’s singles final at Browns Bay yesterday.

 But in making the final Wendy achieved a record which would have brought satisfaction to most other bowlers, especially those of us a lot less talented.

 For it was the third time in consecutive seasons that Wendy has made a national title, a notable hat-trick in itself, even if on each occasion she has had to be content with the runners-up prize money.

 In 2022-23 she gained the silver medal in the pairs with Robyne Walker and last season she gained yet another silver with Takapuna club-mates Robyne, Lauren Mills and Adele Ineson in the fours.

 Despite these, and other near misses, Wendy has never achieved a win at the national championships. She still has an illustrious record, though, for as well as being a Black Jack she has achieved plenty of national honours, including the champion of champion singles in 1998, back-to-back Super-bowls titles in 2001-02 and more recently champion of champion fours with Takapuna and the inter-club sevens.

  And at the weekend she came oh so close to capping those successes, her form being such that she comfortably made the final, winning her semi-final 21-9 over Kirsty Hill and in the quarter-finals claiming the major scalp of North Harbour’s world champion of champions, Birkenhead’s Millie Nathan, 21-18. Earlier, too, in post-section she had beaten the promising Briar Atkinson, from Taranaki.

 But in the final against the accomplished White, a previous winner of the singles in 2019 and with a rich family pedigree as the daughter of former Black Jack Jenny Simpson, she paid the penalty for a slow start and while making her usual recovery it was not quite enough.

 Wendy was one of several North Harbour players who distinguished themselves both in the women’s singles and men’s pairs championship.

 Takapuna’s other Black Jack star Selina Goddard, the experienced Lauren Mills, plus Helensville’s Jenni Hart and Sunnybrae’s Jo Staines, both still juniors, Millie and the evergreen Elaine McClintock, runner-up in this event 10 years ago, also qualified for post-section.

 Selina was one of several past national singles winners who were ousted early in post-section play. Selina was upset by a national development squad member in Olivia Mancer, last season’s champion Leanne Poulson was upset at the same stage and the 2022 champion Tayla Bruce lost in the round of 16 to centre stalwart Trish Croot, now with the Manly club.

 Several Harbour men qualified for post-section in the men’s pairs including Brendon McPhail, Simon Reesby, Bruce McClintock, Phil Chisholm, David Payne, Andy Dorrance, Sean Goldsbury, Grant Keats, Aaron White, Bevan Smith, Neil Fisher, Steve Cox, Wynne Grey and Steve Hoeft, with Helensville’s Bart Robertson, going the deepest by making the last 16.

 That was a notable feat in itself for the standard of competition was high, with the multiple winners of this event, Gary Lawson and Birkenhead club member Tony Grantham, among the early post-section casualties.