McLellan joins Christie, Davis, trio advances to nationals
By Spencer Seymour
Larry McLellan, a member of the Parks Lawn Bowling Club in St. Marys, joined forces with Wayne Christie and Andy Davis of Grand Bend’s Grand Cove Lawn Bowling Club to capture the silver medal at the Senior Triples Lawn Bowling Provincial Championship June 23-24 in Hanover.
The silver medal advanced the trio to the Canadian National Championship, to be hosted Aug. 25-29 in Windsor.
Davis explained how a relaxed approach helped the trio earn the silver and a spot at nationals.
“I think we’re all very composed, and I think that we feel that we finally have the experience now to believe we can play at this level with these players,” said Davis. “And having that in my mind, I just had to relax, bend over and roll it because I know I can do it, and we just have to go out and do it more times than the other team. I guess, on that weekend in Hanover, it was our turn.”
Christie added the result was a highlight of the relatively young lawn bowling careers of him and Davis.
“Andy (Davis) and I have bowled against the best bowlers in Ontario in all sorts of OLBA tournaments, and we’ve done okay, but we’ve never really won anything,” Christie said. “So, for Andy and I to get this, it’s a really good feeling and a feather in our caps to be able to accomplish it.”
Davis added the accomplishment is extra special for him and Christie given how much less lawn bowling experience they have than many of the other competitors.
“Wayne (Christie) and I are rather new to the game. This is our sixth year, not counting two years of COVID, while a lot of our competitors have been playing it for 40 years,” Davis said. “So, based on how good they’ve been, the competition that they provide us, we’re very proud to finally get past a lot of those people.”
The third member of their team, McLellan, added invaluable experience to his teammates, according to Davis.
“Larry (McLellan) has been in lawn bowling forever, and he’s done everything in lawn bowling, and he’s been to several of these competitions,” Davis said. “He’s one of those guys that we always were trying to get to his level and try and beat him, and now we had the opportunity for him to join us, and we just gelled on that weekend to make it to the Canadian nationals.”
McLellan, a fixture in lawn bowling in St. Marys and Ontario generally, described how important a strong dedication is to the game to get to the level of playing for provincial and national titles.
“You have to be committed to what you’re there for,” McLellan said. “We’ve only played two games a day, so there’s lots of other time to do other things. But I think you have to be committed to be ready to play.”
On the opening day of the provincial championship, 17 teams were in the competition, with McLellan, Davis and Christie winning their first match against a team from Seaforth by a score of 11-10. They then defeated a trio from Chesley 20-5, and then a group from Hanover 17-10.
Their winning ways continued on day two with a 16-12 victory over a team from Kitchener. This set them up for a semi-final match against a different Kitchener squad, which McLellan, Davis and Christie won 12-8 to earn a spot in the finals and punch their ticket to the national event.
McLellan and Christie detailed how the trio found so much success in Hanover.
“Number one, we knew who we were playing, so we used our strategy, which was to take away the opponents’ strong points,” said McLellan. “We jumped on them quickly. We got a good lead, and then after that, we just nursed the win home.”
“When you have all three players playing well, good things happen,” added Christie. “Andy (Davis) was leading and he was getting in on the jack. I was playing vice, and I was making some shots to move balls around or get close to the jack. And then Larry (McLellan) was awesome at skip and made some great shots. So, when you put it all together, we all contributed to make it easier on one another.”
McLellan also said it meant a great deal to him to be viewed as the missing piece for Christie and Davis to finally achieve such success.
“It’s very important because, with them being two less experienced guys in front of me, it was nice that they could take turns in picking each other up. That’s why they asked me to skip them. They’ve been so close to getting to the nationals, and they said, ‘We need somebody to get us over the hump, and we’d like you to be our skip.’
“It’s very important to me (that they believed I could help them get over the hump). I didn’t want to let them down either. We worked really well as a team. If one of us wasn’t on, the other two were. I think the experience is now coming their way.”
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