High Profile Events – Auckland Anniversary Weekend 2022

 One, the Milford 5000, which has continued to grow in strength since its inception in 2009, is fast gaining traditional status, while the other, a Birkenhead women’s triples tournament honouring a past champion, will be in its debut year.

This is the inaugural Carole Fredrick Tournament, which Birkenhead has launched as a tribute to one of the club’s and Harbour’s greatest players who passed away early in 2020.

Carole amassed a staggering 27 centre titles over her long career and won two national titles, in the fours in 1999 and again in 2012. She joined an elite group when she was inducted as one of the centre’s legends last year.

Several of the centre’s best women bowlers will compete at Birkenhead on January 29 in a one-day, one green, 16-team tournament for a total stake of $1500, with $600 going to the winning team. There will also be a trophy donated by Carole’s family.

Appropriately among the teams will be Carole’s great friend Ruth Lynch, with whom she won the national fours in 2012 and Sunnybrae’s Mary Gulbrandsen, who was with Carole in the 1999 national winning team.

One of the tournament’s organisers, Emmie Swart, said it was the firm intention of the Birkenhead club for this to become an annual event as recognition of the esteem with which the club held Carole.

The Milford 5000, also two bowl triples, caters now for one-to-eight year bowlers, with a condition that at least one member of each team should be under five years. Since the event was started by then Milford members, Tim Preston and Graham Dorreen, it has become one of the foremost tournaments of its type in New Zealand.

Proof of that is the many entries from outside North Harbour, with bowlers coming not only from Auckland but Northland and the Thames Valley centres.

Tournament organiser Jan Hutton says the capacity field of 32 teams was reached some weeks ago and she continues to receive inquiries from all parts of the country, even the South Island “We have filled our two greens easily and if we had a third we would have filled that, too,” she says.

 Birkenhead’s Gary Wallace, Millie and Chad Nathan will return to defend the title they won last year and many of Harbour’s most promising junior and intermediate player will be in the field.

 In this group are Takapuna’s Jerry and Jacqui Belcher, Orewa’s Willie McIvor and Mairangi Bay’s Allan Langley, David Payne, Phil Chisholm, Theresa Rogers and Colleen Rice.