On Thursday starting at 11am KMC will be bringing people to try petanque at our terrain. They call it Flame and other sports will also be on offer. It will go on to 3pm. We don’t know how many people will attend but if any members would like to come along early and help out it would be very handy. When club session starts at 1pm there will be plenty of room for both to co-exist. Weather forecast is hot, hot, hot. Bring a hat and a bottle of water.
3 Open events need volunteers
These are in our calendar and we’d like to have a raffle and organise light refreshments for each of them. This Sunday will be water and pop rather than coffee. September might be coffee depending on the weather. October will be coffee.
Is there anyone out there who’d like to volunteer to do the raffle and/or refreshments? If so please talk to a committee member about this. It’s not too arduous. Two of them are 1300 starts. We distributed flyers last weekend at Heckmondwike and there may be a few from outside Huddersfield coming to play. Should be a good afternoon. Temperatures are forecast to rise above 30 degrees. Wear a hat.
Members meeting
Sunday 5th August 1230 in community room.
To keep members informed about the clubhouse project which has started moving,
Members monthly melee follows at 1300.
Club singles champion is Yvonne
Sunday 15th July
Considering the clash with Wimbledon Men’s final and the World Cup final a good turnout of 16 for today’s Singles Tournament. In this event you’re on your own with only 3 boules and no partner to bail you out. Because of this we handicap players to try and even out the experience and ability. Some players start with +7 on the scoreboard every game. Some start from scratch.
Bob was leader after the snake with 3 wins + 12. 2nd was Yvonne with 2 wins + 10.
These 2 played a final which Yvonne won 13-10.
In joint 3rd place were last years finalists, Maureen and Roy on 2 wins + 8
The miracle of Greenhead Park
You’ll know Elaine – she’s been a member for quite a few years now and you know that she has a good day and sometimes a bad day but she always turns up and tries hard. Yesterday, a run of the mill Thursday evening, something happened that was quite miraculous. She decided she wanted to shoot so the club captain who was there gave her a few words of advice to assist the process.
No rocket science just simple aphorisms like if you shoot along the ground there are more bumps and lumps and stones to hit so there’s more chance of the boule going off the line. If you shoot you should go to aim to land as near to the boule you’re shooting as possible – ideally hit it without touching the ground but even landing 6 inches in front is probably good enough. Other simple things like raising your arm just a touch to generate the power to reach the target and gradually Elaine picked this up and her shooting got better and better.
Over a three game session she became the ‘go to’ shooter. People volunteered to be pointer for her so she could practise shooting and following the simple techniques that have been outlined she started hitting a high percentage of shots. Her confidence grew and she was soon shooting a boule from 3 inches away from the coche and leaving her own boule 5 inches away.
At the very end it was pointed out to her that by shooting one particular boule she could raise her existing score of 1 to 4. She didn’t know at the time but her team was on nine points they had one on the ground the opposition had second but her team had third and fourth. It was suggested that if she shot this particular ball out she would score 4 not just one point. It was a long shot – it was approaching 10 m but she just did it and won the game.
It was an astonishing display of rapid learning – she realised a technique would work and she executed it consistently and she won all three games that evening mainly by shooting out opposition boules. She wasn’t on her own so there’s no fix. Alastair and Yvonne were there watching her turn from an inconsistent pointer to someone who could shoot and hit well over 60% of the time.
Huddersfield Pétanque 