Micah Oswin claims back-to-back Ballarat Junior Championship Singles titles

Last night, Micah successfully retained his Bill Holmes Ballarat Junior Singles Championship title, defeating Deer Park/Learmonth’s Addy Ryan (25-21). As expected, it was an absolutely brilliant showcase of lawn bowls between the two Gold Digger’s leaders.

Last year Micah scraped in 25-20 and the previous year Addy got home by just one shot, so the expectation was for the two stars to produce a close result in breaking the title tie.

Addy had a dream start – 7 up after 4 ends – before Micah got on the card for the first time. Addy then extended the lead to 11-2 over the next two ends.

The game was threatening to be a blow out, however, Micah was able to win back the mat and with a change of length he worked his way back to just 3 shots behind.

The match took another shift in momentum with Addy picking up 5 consecutive ends to stake a claim on the title with a commanding 18-9 lead.

On the 19th end, Addy had a very unfortunate result from an upshot that moved the jack back into open space and Micah capitalised drawing close with his last bowl to collect four. He drew confidence from that end to string together 3 more successful ends and reduced the margin to 1 (17-18).

At this point the match went to another level, the jack was constantly moving and great shots were required to win the ascendency back. The two champions were trading ends until Addy claimed two singles in a row to move one ultimate end from the title at 21-18.

With the match now 26 ends long, Addy held a solid two shots and had heaped the pressure on Micah’s last bowl. Playing with big weight, Micah was able to remove both bowls to collect one shot and stay in the game.

Following up with a three, Micah captured the lead for the first time at 22-21. Drawing his first three bowls within a mat’s width, Micah held match. Addy narrowly missed impacting the head with her third bowl and couldn’t reduce the count. Micah played safe with his last bowl covering the back of the rink. With her final bowl to keep the game alive, Addy played with perfect weight, but slid under Micah’s bowls without changing the head. Micah had claimed his second consecutive Bill Holmes title.

Congratulations, Micah. Another addition to your quickly growing resume of achievements.