JAYNE Parsons’ remarkable rise in blind lawn bowling in Australia was completed last week with the Dudley Park resident winning the women’s B1 category at the National Bowls Championship in Adelaide.
Parsons, a Paralympic bronze-medal winning cyclist for New Zealand, made the switch from a bike to a bowl after the London Games in 2012 and has bowled competitively for less than 12 months.
After moving to Australia with her husband Brent, Parsons set her sights on becoming the Australian national blind bowling champion, a feat she has now achieved.
Competing in her first National Championships from April 29 to May 7 in Salisbury, South Australia the determined athlete not only won the women’s B1 (no sight) class but won the mixed pairs and placed second in the open men’s and women’s class.
Blinded as a result of domestic violence at 22 years old, Parsons, now 52, was also selected to represent Australia in the World Championship in South Africa in 2017; her goal now is to win.
Parsons and Brent, who acted as her director, the person who guides the bowler through the delivery of the bowl, got over nerves and an unfamiliar bowling surface to come out on top in the National Championships.
“It was a great experience,” Parsons said.
“I didn’t expect to do so well.
“I thought we’d win a couple but to do as well as we did was great.
“We started a bit nervously because we didn’t know what we were going up against but played the best we ever had.”
Before the competition began the Mandurah pair became the talk of the competition.
“A rumour started circling that we couldn’t play long ends (longer distances),” Parsons said.
Brent said the rumour started after a practise session where the pair tried to become accustomed to the grass greens.
“Jayne was putting her bowl well past the jack at 27 metres,” he said. “We needed to slow down the bowl so we started bowling at 15m to get use to the surface and then people started saying we couldn’t bowl long ends.
“After a good couple of hours practising we had worked it out but in the first game the girl rolled it at 30 metres.”
The tactic obviously didn’t work with the Parsons well over any concerns in their first practise bowl to win the game 21-0.
Parsons said: “It didn’t feel easy though, at every end we thought that this girl is going to come back”. Parsons went on to win the women’s competition and paired with Manjimup’s John Ryan to win the mixed pairs.
In the open division Parsons was defeated by Ryan 15-8 to finish with the silver medal.
“It was good for Western Australia,” Parsons said. “We didn’t lose a game to any other state.”
The national competition was followed by a training camp where the Australian team was selected.
Brent said the selectors wanted to see if they could improve their technique before they were selected.
“They said we had won but in a style that was unorthodox and wanted us to get our procedures right,” he said.
“At the end we were getting more consistent and they liked what they saw.”
Before the World Championship in 2017 the next challenge for the Parsons will be the Tran Tasman competition in New Zealand early next year.
Parsons said she had already started getting flack from her former countrymen.
“I’m really looking forward to it,” she said.
Parsons train at the Peel Bowling Club; if anyone with a disability wants to become involved in lawn bowls contact the club on 9581 1415.
