Year Inducted 2023
It all started 32 years ago when Gill was working at AMF Bowling, Firth Park, Sheffield. Her then manager, the late Bruce Ford, asked if they could try and run a junior tournament.
They put together a trio’s tournament and, with a lot of thought! called it The Sheffield Trios. No computers for them back then, all scoring/results done by hand on a large wipe clean sheet – the good old days! After a couple of years, the National Association of Youth Bowling Clubs (NAYBC), asked if they could use the tournament for their ranking table.
Then came the Bowlers Club North in Scunthorpe. In the beginning this was a very slow starter with few entries, and they had to make the decision whether to keep persevering or call it a day. This was hard for them, living in Torquay travelling 5 hours to Scunthorpe on a Friday evening after work, back down Sunday evening and back at work Monday morning, but they couldn’t just give in, that’s not them, they carried on. The southern version then stopped for the same reason, lack of entries. Brian and Gill then made another decision to try and move the tournament to a more central area and make it a National Bowlers Club. Coventry became the home for this, and entries grew. Unfortunately, they had to move from Coventry and went to Nuneaton, this was then sold and the club moved to Nottingham and finally to Mansfield where it is now.
When the NAYBC was disbanded Brian and Gill were asked to go onto the newly formed committee of the YBE as tournament managers and now they are running several of the junior tournaments which are on the calendar. Both get a lot of enjoyment from running these events, but it does make them feel old when the kids who were entering when they first started are now bringing their own kids to our tournaments.
Brian also received the BTBA Chairmans award for services to Youth Bowling in 2018.
Over the years Brian and Gill have had, and still receive, a lot of help from many dedicated people throughout their ‘tournament’ lives and thank them. It’s the kids that has keep them going and it is their intention is to carry on, at least until they are told any different.
