By Russell Bennett
A new program designed to promote lawn bowls as a sporting alternative for local youngsters has taken primary schools throughout the region by storm.
Kooweerup Primary School teacher and district sports coordinator Steve Dillon was recently involved in the pilot program, hosted by the Kooweerup Bowls Club and including the Kooweerup, Bunyip, Bayles, Cardinia, St John’s and Tooradin primary schools.
The program, originally delivered to schools throughout the swamp district, was tailored to Tier 3 intervention students – those who have no real interest in contact sports.
The program was the first of its kind in the local area and ran with the aim of it becoming a regular event in the years to come, and acting as a potential stepping stone for a team from the district to be sent to compete in the School Sport Victoria (SSV) championships.
Dillon, also a senior cricketer at the Kooweerup Cricket Club in the WGCA, was instrumental in getting the bowls program off the ground.
“A lot of our sporting base for interschool sport programs are your footy, basketball, soccer – those kinds of sports,” Dillon explained.
“But we thought this would be a great opportunity for Year 6 students who’re maybe more interested in non-contact sports to get involved for a bit of fun.
“We did a three-week program and the kids had a lot of fun learning about lawn bowls.
“We’re trying to get as much sport as we can down our way to just feed it into the kids – we put a big emphasis on sportsmanship, so we thought these types of events would be great for the kids, especially our older kids who’re moving into high school.
“We thought it was a great opportunity for them to start building that rapport with each other. It’s great for them, and we’re going to trial it for our middle school kids as well next year.
“It was a fantastic event. The bowls club did it all for nothing as well, so it was a free event, which was great for them because it promotes the community as well, which can only be a great thing.”
At this stage, the idea is to expand the concept of the program even further for 2020.
The Kooweerup Bowls Club is looking at the potential of running a Sunday morning competition involving the students who took part in the program and wish to develop their interest in the sport further.
The Kooweerup Bowls club wished to thank Bryan and Julie Walker, Gerry Fuller, Pauline Gray, and Steve Payne; and Steve Dillon, Linda King and principal Nathan Jagoe from Kooweerup Primary School for their involvement in the program.
