Highton and Ocean Grove played out an epic Geelong Bowls Region Premier Division grand final at Belmont with underdogs Highton scrambling home by one shot on Sunday March 17.
Highton had to do it the hard way before winning 58 to 57.
They lost to Ocean Grove in the qualifying final and then the preliminary finals weren’t played on March 9 or 10 due to the extreme heat.
It meant Highton had to defeat Drysdale on Saturday March 16 and then front up the following day against the top of the table Grovers.
“It was a pretty amazing feeling at the club – everybody was pretty pumped, especially with how close the game was the entire way through,” Highton captain Scott McLachlan said.
“Everyone’s been on their own journey this year and (you) couldn’t write a better script for everyone really.”
Ocean Grove won two of the three rinks on offer, but it was Dan Priddle’s rink that came away with a 25 to 12 win that went a long way to clinching victory.
However, McLachlan said his side takes no notice of the individual rink scores, insteading focussing on the overall total.
“We don’t really look at the individual scores too much, we just play the one board,” he said.
“We just play the master board and that’s what we’ve kind of worked on all season.”
McLachlan said his side learned a lot from the qualifying final loss to the Grovers before overcoming bogey side Drysdale on the Saturday.
“In the regular season they’ve (Drysdale) been our bogey side so we wanted to make sure we came out and had a good showing against them,” he said.
“The win against Drysdale and how we performed on the Saturday probably boosted the confidence as well.
“Even though we lost on all three rinks (in the qualifying final) we kind of realised that we were pretty close on all three rinks. We were probably just a couple of good bowls here and there from winning it.”
Torquay clinched the Division 1 Section 1 flag with a 28-shot win against Portarlington while Geelong defeated Ocean Grove by 11 in Section 2.
Eastern Park won a thriller in Division 2 Section 1 by one shot against Anglesea and Leopold emerged triumphant in Section 2 against Geelong RSL.
Highton defeated Barwon Heads in the Division 1 Section 1 grand final and City of Geelong defeated Geelong RSL in Section 2.
Torquay scraped past Drysdale by two shots in Division 4 Section 1 and St Leonards defeated Leopold in Section 2.
Bell Post Hill won Division 5, Portarlington won Division 6 Section 1 and Eastern Park lifted the trophy in Section 2.
