Battle of the Bridges Tournament

The inaugural tournament of the Battle of the Bridges took place last weekend at the Alan Brewster Centre in Papatoetoe.

This tournament replaced the “Focus Cup” Tournament as Focus 2000, Iris and Creative Abilities all contributed evenly to the event.

It was the largest tournament I had been to in recent years with 54 players and it was great to see so many new players having fun and participating in Boccia.  This was a Pairs Tournament and all grades of Boccia were mixed.  Each pair was also given a handicapped score to help even out the playing field.

The draw was ingeniously done by Harvey (as usual) with everyone having 5 games in the initial Pool Play and then depending on how many games you won and how many points you had for and against your pair, you were placed in another pool and had 3 more game to play. 

The Northland team did exceptionally well with everyone placing in the top 4 pairs in their respective Pool.  Kayela Benseman brought home a gold medal (and a million dollar smile), with her pairs partner.

The Northland results are as follows:

Pool A - Scott Burdett 2nd
Pool B - Kimberley McLean 2nd
Pool C - Michelle Batchelor 2nd
Pool D - Neale Batchelor and Annie Wihongi (with assistant Donna) 3rd
Pool B - Alex Dickson
Pool D - Kayela Benseman 1st

There was fierce competition for the Battle of the Bridges Trophy which was won by the “North of the Bridge” team.  The decision of who would get the trophy was worked out by the score of points for each North or South Pair.  The end result was North 243 points and South 189 points.  Great laughter was had by all as Harvey lead the South Team to bow down to the North Team in Congratulations.

Next year the tournament will be held on the North Shore. 

It was a great tournament and I highly recommend it to others to go.  It is not often you get to place mixed pairs with players that you don’t normally play with or against and rules are often a little more ‘relaxed’ than normal which makes for a great learning experience too.

Michelle Batchelor