2019-02-22

Young gun a winner in croquet

Jamie Gumbrell, aged 18, is an up and coming croquet player. He has just come third in the prestigious President’s Eights, competing in the top Eight for the best available Golf Croquet players in Australia.

Now he has won $1000 for a video entitled Croquet: For the young at heart! See https://youtu.be/x6WxAkLr1Qk. 

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2019-02-14

Excellent GC tournament at Shepparton

The sky was blue and the courts were in great condition. The scene was set for two days of action in the GVCA 2019 Golf Croquet Open Tournament at Shepparton Croquet Club.

On February 13^th and 14^th, 31 players from 15 clubs participated in three Divisions based on handicaps.

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Clubs lead the way in promoting junior croquet

A number of clubs around Croquet Victoria have been having success in working to encourage juniors to play croquet.

Casterton CC are in the lead, with 13 junior members, many of them now having played every Saturday morning in an established and sponsored GC competition. Five Casterton juniors played in the Under 21 GC Nationals earlier this year - they were very satisfied with their showing.

Ellie Norris, Casterton Secretary and committed supporter of junior croquet, describes the experience:

January 2019 will forever be remembered by five junior members of the Casterton Croquet Club when they were able to compete in the Under 21 Nationals in Adelaide.     Together with their family who made the effort to take them to Adelaide, the members of our Club as well as Casterton Lions and Lions Merino & Digby and the many members of the Casterton community who contributed to our fund raising efforts, it was a significant milestone.

Lois Perry and Ellie Norris (President and Secretary respectively) of the Club found it hard to contain their emotions as they watched the under 21 players who have played for their State and Australia compete against the junior Casterton players. The amazing talent some of these young people displayed did not in any way intimidate our junior players who took to the courts with tremendous enthusiasm and positive expectations.

James Wombwell’s first game saw him draw level with his opponent, Felix Gelman-White from Williamstown Club with a handicap of 6. James’ handicap is 12. A huge task for James. It was an annoying fly in his eye at the last second of his strike that gave the game to Felix. What a game of croquet for our 10 year old James.  

Jake Hausler’s first opponent was Peter Crook from Woodville in South Australia. This was another amazingly close finish. At six-all the game was decided in a tie breaker finish with Jake proving just the better in this brilliant game. Jake was cool, calm and collected throughout despite not having had the practice lead up.  

Katie Richardson was a slow starter but eventually won two of her games and displayed steely determination throughout all six contests on the day.

Williamstown CC has been supporting the development of young player Felix Gelman-White, who also competed in the Under 21s.

Deniliquin CC initiated a school-based competition in Deniliquin and then looked for partners to compete with. This was picked up by Goulburn Valley CA, and the GVCA clubs each sought out a partner school. The project climaxed with a lively competition at Shepparton in December 2018, between two teams from Deniliquin and teams from the GVCA schools – the comment heard was that Golf Croquet is the Rock and Roll of the discipline!

Kalimna Park have been involved in a school holiday program organised by their local Sports Assembly, with 17 participants.

The pop-up croquet club RNB Croquet Club have run three days of croquet for youngsters at the Lord Mayors Camp, and are also running after-school activities for students with a very lively flyer showcasing Jack Williams.

Northern District have engaged with the Quarry Hill Primary School, with most of years 5 and 6 giving croquet a try. Students from Golden Square PS then took to the courts to challenge other Year 6 classes.

Both Wangaratta and Benalla have engaged with students from their local secondary schools – several school groups have visited the Wangaratta club once a week for a term, and Benalla has had a group visiting two or three times for an hour at a time.

Then there are the clubs that welcome and encourage grandchildren: Belmont and Twin City come to mind.

And quite a number of other clubs now have junior members: Brunswick, Drouin, Queenscliff, Bairnsdale, Drysdale, Colac, Belmont, Wonthaggi, Shepparton, Maryborough, Mornington.

Quite an advance for a sport where we initially thought we might not need a Child Safety policy!

Luckily most clubs now do have a Child Safety policy – there are 21 that Council is yet to hear from, hopefully they will soon give this some thought. Could be a useful direction for the future.

Croquet Victoria is currently considering how to provide more support for the development of junior croquet.

Well done to all those clubs who are already making progress. It would be great to hear from other clubs that haven’t been mentioned.

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2019-02-20

Wimmera GC Doubles day at Kalimna Park

The Wimmera Croquet Association Golf Croquet Doubles Championships were played at Kalimna Park Croquet Club on Wednesday 20 February.

We welcomed six members who played from Casterton, they have only just joined our region.

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2019-03-03

Kew AC Tournament Divs 1 and 2

Kew Croquet Club held its Division 1 and 2 tournament this last week-end.

Unfortunately there was only one player for Division 1 so that division was cancelled.

In Division 2 there were six players, from Brighton, Corowa Civic (NSW, but affiliated with VCA), MCC and Kew.

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