Results – Champ of Champ 1-5 Year Singles – 7 & 8 June 2025

  • June 8, 2025

Hobsonville’s Clinton Smith repeated his success of last season by winning the 2025 North Harbour one-to-five men’s champion of champions singles title at the Takapuna club at the weekend.

And Mairangi Bay’s Julie Chhour was equally impressive in winning the women’s equivalent, taking her first centre title at this level.

In the men’s final Smith beat Wellsford’s Trevor Minty 21-10, and in the women’s final Chhour beat Orewa’s Beryl Truebody 21-13.

Both champions were deserving winners, prevailing in what for relatively inexperienced bowlers was a highly competitive standard.
Smith, who also plays in the Auckland centre for the Howick club, for whom he won an Auckland any combination junior fours title, is in his final season in the one-to-five-year ranks, but Julie still has a season left.  She was just as imposing in her semi-final win, also 21-13, over another Harbour junior representative, Hobsonville’s Deanne Bronlund, and clearly in the next few seasons will help the already considerable depth Mairangi Bay has with accomplished women bowlers.

Truebody had an enthralling, 25-end battle in her semi with Jeni Hart, who represented Takapuna having earlier this season won centre open titles, in the mixed pairs for Helensville and more recently in the women’s champion of champion pairs with Wendy Jensen for Wellsford.  Beryl jumped away to a 16-3 lead, only for Jeni to make a superb comeback to where on the last end, though down 19-20 on the board, she was actually holding the game with two shots. However, with her last bowl Beryl wicked twice off side bowls to end up sitting on the jack for a 21-19 win.

Smith won his semi-final 21-14 over a representative team-mate, Manly’s Andy Dorrance, and Minty his semi over Takapuna’s Mike Liuaga 21-17 in an excellent match that could have gone either way. Minty, who has been playing for only 21-months but with many years in business-house competition, countered some of Liuaga’s effectiveness with drives with his uncanny ability to work off other bowls.

In the men’s qualifying rounds at Mairangi Bay on Saturday there were a couple of surprise results. Browns Bay’s remarkable Lloyd Sinton, an open champion in the pairs this season, lost 21-18 to a first-year bowler in Waimauku’s Frederick Butt and Milford’s Hayden Wilkinson, winner of the junior championship singles in April, lost to Michael Jackson (Omaha), also 21-18.