OXNARD : Lawn Bowling Club Plays a Polite Game
Lawn bowling may not offer the raw excitement of such Southern California sports as beach volleyball, surfing or hang gliding.
But that is quite all right with the Ventura County fans of this English pastime.
“It’s a very polite game,” said Oxnard resident Ralph Eckton. “Everything is done with sign language. There’s no hollering at one another.”
In addition, the Oxnard-Joslyn Lawn Bowls Club has a dress code. “We wear white while we’re playing, as they do in England,” said Eckton’s wife, Marie.
Ralph and Marie Eckton helped five years ago to found Ventura County’s only lawn bowling club, which meets at Wilson Park in Oxnard.
While they do not go so far as to serve tea and crumpets at their matches, coffee and doughnuts or cookies are as standard as the sports equipment.
“At every club you go to, they always have the coffee pot and the teapot and the goodies,” Ralph Eckton said.
A cross between cricket and alley bowling, lawn bowling is played in lanes drawn on a green, which is typically 120 feet square. Players try to get their balls, called bowls, as close as possible to a white jack, a ball about the size of a cue ball, Marie Eckton said.
While bowls come in different sizes to match the size of players’ hands, they are generally about the size of a grapefruit and vary in weight from just under three pounds to just under four pounds, Ralph Eckton said.
The bowls are round except for a slightly flattened area on one side. This flat side, or bias, causes the bowl to turn slightly when it is tossed, increasing the skill required for the game.
The Oxnard club has 50 members and plays throughout Southern California. While some clubs have players as young as 10, senior citizens like the game because they “can play it till they’re 100 years old,” Marie Eckton said.
The Oxnard-Joslyn Lawn Bowls Club will hold an open house on July 27 from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. for anyone interested in playing or receiving free lessons.
