THE SPRING Bank holiday is usually a busy time for local bowlers and this year is no exception, starting tonight at Steeton with the local preliminaries in the Yorkshire ABA Merit.

The qualifiers will then represent the area in the finals at Almondbury Liberal Club on Monday (10.30am). It has been some time since a local success in this event considering the probable quality of the final line-up.

After a busy day of league games on Saturday, the Yorkshire Parks annual Inter-District event is on Sunday in the Leeds area.

Local representatives are the Hebden Royd team, who are grouped with the Aire-Wharfe area, the Heavy Woollen region and old rivals Bradford.

They play their opponents in that order at Holbeck, Scholes and Tadcaster BC, starting at 10am. They face a tough task with Sheffield in the other group. The final is at Magnets Sports Club, Tadcaster at around 5pm.

Skipton Veterans are back on track after a 41-15 overall victory over a poor Castleford team. They only had one loser at Cross Hills, where Cliff Taylor and Derek Seed were the best winners.

At Castleford in Methley, there were two losers, with captain/manager Alistair Keighley performing best. Skipton's next match is on June 2 against past winners Huddersfield, which will be much tougher in the Yorkshire ABA’s Veterans League.

The Worth Valley Trebles are scheduled for Keighley BC on Sunday but there were insufficient entries at the time of writing for it to go ahead.

Yorkshire Parks began their county campaign last weekend with an expected overall victory over North Shropshire, where locals Andrew Tate, Robbie Ellis and Peter Clark excelled, the latter pair in the away leg at Hadnall.

Tate, back after a break, won 21-7 at Littlemoor. The county’s veterans were also successful, but only just, against old rivals East Midlands, with Barry Turnbull doing well at Rufford Park.

Several Federation District matches were on the agenda last weekend, where locals Graeme Reay (Halifax) and Peter Hepworth, Alan Buckley, Dave Smith, Kevin Mackie and Joanne Ellis won for the Aire-Wharfe B team against Burton in the home leg at Broughton Road.

Sharon Gadd returned to the Yorkshire Ladies team as they beat Shropshire over two legs to successfully begin their campaign over the reigning champions. Viv Abell suffered a narrow defeat in the same match.

It was a different story for the young Skipton/Worth Valley Juniors in their first matches, where the team have suffered defeats by Heavy Woollen and Leeds, but Ben Hewitt has won both games to show his prowess.