Spalding Indoor Bowls Club talent Danielle Wild picked up a silver medal as she represented England at the under-18 International Series over the weekend.
The series was played in a top club style format and Danielle was selected to lead the triples with Devon Cooper (Riverain) and Ajay Morphett (Egerton Park) and lead the fours with Devon, Joseph Vandepeer (Oyster) and Matthew Bell (Scarborough).
Although this was Wild’s first event in an England shirt, she was selected to play as part of the British Lions team at the under-25 international series in Nottingham back in February.
The first session of the under-18 series was on Friday evening, where the first group game of the triples was played.
Wild narrowly lost out to Wales in two very closely contested sets (5-6, 4-7), but bounced back extremely well as she had to go straight back on the green to play the first group game of the fours – where she beat a Scotland set on a tie break (4-3, 4-5, 1-0).
This meant that going into Saturday, a win in her second and final group game in the fours against Wales would give Wild and her team mates a shot at the gold medal match on Sunday. However, in the triples, even a win in her final group game against Scotland would mean that she would be heavily reliant on other results to go her way to earn a place in the gold medal match.
Saturday started with the triples for Wild, as they were edged out by eventual gold medallists from Scotland in straight sets (5-8, 3-7).
As was the case on Friday evening, she fared much better in the fours as they beat Wales in straight sets (6-3, 8-4) to earn a place in the fours gold medal match against another set from England on Sunday.
The gold medal match was highly competitive. Wild’s four struck first blood, winning the first set 9-6. The other England four fought back well to win the second set 7-5 and force a one end tie break to decide who would go home with the gold and silver medal.
Unfortunately for the Spalding bowler, things did not go her way on the tie break end and she was narrowly edged out in the final.
Wild said: “I am extremely proud to be given the opportunity to play for my country and delighted to have won silver in the fours at my first series”.
- Spalding IBC’s Jordan Philpott came within touching distance of a place at the World Singles Championships at Saturday’s qualifier in Lincoln.
He started the day with comfortable straight sets wins against Greg Smith from Lincoln (8-6, 9-5) and Craig Newton from York (8-1, 7-3) before things got slightly tougher against Brenda Barlow from Lincoln, as Philpott came through an incredibly close match on a tie break (6-5, 6-7, 2-0).
In the semi-final, an all Spalding affair saw Jordan matched up against Mathew Orrey. He edged past Orrey by a single shot in each set (6-5, 7-6) to earn a place against the experienced Simon Skelton in the final qualifying match.
But Skelton, who was half of the world pairs champions back in 2015, proved too good on the day who sneaked past Jordan in a high quality final (4-5, 5-7).
- Spalding IBC ace Lauren Finbow has been invited to take part in the English Indoor Bowling Associations under-25 development day.
The development day takes place at Ely Bowls Club on Saturday, November 10 – and a good performance from Finbow could see her invited to the full ladies’ under-25 international trial at Rugby Thornfield in December.
- Spalding IBC’s over-60s played their second game of the season away at Boston on Thursday.
After last week’s game against Sleaford when Spalding lost 16-2 and the fact that Boston has beaten Sleaford 18-0, Spalding expected a tough game.
Spalding found themselves up in only one rink at the half way stage, not to mention 32 shots adrift on aggregate.
They fought back and finished winning on two rinks and drawing on one rink (narrowly losing out on the win on the last end) for a final score of 13-5 in Boston’s favour (108-74) on aggregate.
The captain welcomed new player Tony Westland to the squad, as well as the welcome return of Peter Lane. The top winning rink was skipped by captain David Lunn, with Gerald Horner, Rob West and Peter Godding assisting.
