National Champion of Champion Women’s Pairs – 15 to 17 August 2025

  • August 18, 2025

North Harbour’s representatives, former Black Jack, Wendy Jensen and her partner, Jeni Hart, continued the centre’s disappointing return when the national champion of champion women’s pairs were held at the weekend at Auckland’s New Lynn club.

It was an especially frustrating time for Wendy and Jeni, who entered the tournament in the Wellsford club colours, as their hopes disappeared on the opening qualifying day when each of their first two games was lost by a one-shot margin, both 17-16 against.  That meant, with three wins needed to make post-section, they were playing the second day only for pride.

They were not the only high-profile combination, however, who suffered the same fate. Another Black Jack, Tayla Bruce, and her partner from Christchurch’s Burnside club, Olivia Mancer, also lost their chance with two narrow first day losses.

North Harbour still had some involvement in post-section in centre gold star holder, Trish Croot, up until recent times a prominent member of both the centre and the Birkenhead and Manly clubs. She and Lisa White, playing for Kapiti Coast’s Raumati club, qualified comfortably, but in the quarter-finals were on the wrong end of a another 17-16 scoreline, to Karen Ewart and Rosanna Muriwai, from Wellington’s Naenane club.

Bronwyn Stevens and Ange Francis, from the North East Valley club, gave the Dunedin centre another 2025 champion of champions title to add to the men’s fours won by Taieri, by winning a final of top quality against the Auckland club’s Agnes Moto and Lisa Prideaux.  Overcoming a 0-7 deficit after four ends and one 1-20 loss in one of their qualifying rounds, Stevens and Francis won by yet another 17-16 scoreline.

The champion of champion events continue this weekend with the men’s and women’s triples. In the men’s at Royal Oak Harbour’s men’s representatives are Helensville’s Carlson Barnett, Brendon McPhail and Bart Robertson and Mairangi Bay’s Jan Gledhill, Sheryl Wellington and Colleen Rice in the women’s at New Lynn.