Recognition for Hewitt, Crawford

Wayne Hewitt
Wayne Hewitt
Wayne Hewitt (Fairfield) and Carolyn Crawford (St Clair) were the big winners at the Bowls Dunedin awards ceremony at the Taieri Bowling Club last night.

It is proving to be a stellar year for Hewitt (67), who was awarded the Stan Seear Trophy for male bowler of the year.

The 32-year veteran of the greens has been in top form throughout the 2018-19 season.

A retired painter, Hewitt won his fifth centre title in the final round of interclub competition early last month, playing second in the Reece Aiken-skipped champion of champion fours team.

That earned him his first gold star, an achievement highly prized by players who are awarded a gold star for every five centre titles.

It took Hewitt 12 years to win his first centre title, but achieving the feat of five for a gold star has been a work in progress for the past two decades.

He won his first centre title in the 1999 champion of champion fours for the Adess Shield.

He won a second centre title in 2000 as a member of the winning open fours team and his third in 2004, also in the open fours.

But it took 15 years to win a fourth, when earlier in the year Hewitt played another key role in adding the E.C. Falconer Memorial Trophy to the Fairfield trophy cabinet, claiming the men's open triples title with Aiken and Russell Reynolds.

Carolyn Crawford
Carolyn Crawford
The next target for Hewitt will be another bag of five titles to earn a bar to keep his gold star company on his jacket.

Crawford won the women's bowler of the year title and now has a haul of 28 titles. Her first title was the open singles in 1990.

More often than not she is in the final mix of post-section play.

This was evidenced when, along with Anne Muir, she won the national pairs title in 2014, defeating Black Jacks Jo Edwards and Val Smith in the final.

The Crawford and Muir combination proved another stumbling block for the Black Jacks pair at the 2017 national championships in New Plymouth.

Crawford, a compliance officer with Inland Revenue, had a great battle with Beth Brown (Taieri) throughout the season in the race to have the distinction of achieving the honour of being awarded the Millie Khan Memorial Trophy for Dunedin female bowler of the year.

Crawford finished on 28 points and Brown on 21 points.

But titles in open fours and champion of champion pairs, runner-up spots in mixed pairs, open singles, open triples and champion of champion singles to go with third-place finishes in open pairs and champion of champion fours proved enough in terms of consistency to outscore Brown for the prized trophy.

There was consolation for Brown who won a second bar to go with her gold star, having picked up her 15th centre title during the season.

Crawford's St Clair team-mate, Trish Marr, picked up her first bar to a gold star, having won a 10th title during the season, and another of Crawford's tea- mates, Sharon McCaw, won a fifth title for her gold star.

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