Tugun’s Sex Pistols won the 2011 Ladies Team Challenge over Toowoomba’s Chardy Queens last month.
The win wasn’t easy for the Gold Coast ladies, with the result decided on the final bowl of the competition.
Tugun’s Lynn Baker and Cam Maunsell had a six shot lead with two bowls to go, after the other rink had wrapped up 19-15 in Toowoomba’s favour.
The Chardy Queens were holding one shot in the final end, needing to grab three to clinch the overall win.
Joyce McGeorge delivered a great final bowl, but it wasn’t quite enough to secure victory.
It was a thrilling end to a seesawing encounter, which saw Baker and Maunsell struggle for ascendency in the early stages.
Their fortunes changed with a purple patch in the 13th and 14th ends, when the Tugun pair picked up a massive seven shots to streak away from their opponents.
The Chardy Queens faced an uphill battle to catch the Pistols but managed to claw their way back to within striking distance in the finals stages.
Despite their desperation and quality play, there just wasn’t enough time for the Toowoomba ladies to get back on top.
In the other rink, Susan O’Toole burst out of the blocks, helping Tugun power to a 5-0 lead but the Queens hit back, evening the scores half way through their final round match.
Both combinations struggled to get an advantage on the scoreboard, with the scores tied until the closing stages.
The Chardy Queens managed to gather themselves and pull away for the win.
However, their four –shot margin wasn’t enough to negate Bake and Maunsell’s win.
The Tugun team had a tough run to the final, gaining their spot on the last bowl of the semi-final, against Sunshine Coast side, Kooka’s Kitties.
Talking to Baker after the match, she admitted feeling the nerves heading into the final ends.
“My legs felt like jelly and my hands were shaking,” she said.
“It was a really difficult green to read. We’ve never played on this surface before. It was really difficult but once you got the feel of it, you could actually relax a little bit,” she said.
Baker said the fact that Toowoomba had played only three matches in the finals at Indooroopilly, while Tugun played four, gave her side a slight edge.
“I think [playing four games] might have given us a bit of an advantage,” she said.
2011 was the second time the Ladies Team Challenge had been run, with almost twice the participants of last year.
The main cause of the competition growth was the expansion of the competition to the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Downs zones this year, on top of the original Brisbane zones.
The success of this move showed, with the new zones providing all four semi-finalists, with one from the Sunshine Coast, one from the Downs zone and two from the Gold Coast.
Event organiser Michelle Russell plans to expand the competition even further in 2012, to encompass the Burnett region.
The competition aims to give more opportunities to working women who can’s play in the traditional timeslots, but anyone can nominate to play.
Baker said she and her team had enjoyed their first time in the competition.
“It gave us all a great opportunity. It was more competition than fours and every week you got to play against different ladies. The competition and format of it, is wonderful because you learn so much in every game,” she said.
“There’ll be a lot more girls from Tugun and the Gold Coast in this competition [next year],” she said.