Enthralled by the 2022 Commonwealth Video games bowls on TV, Teri Blackbourn instructed a buddy: “They’re giving me the bug.”
“It was watching the women – Selina Goddard, Katelyn Inch and the workforce,” Blackbourn recollects, of the 5 New Zealand girls who gained three bronze medals at these Video games.
Having performed with members of that workforce as a teen, the indoor bowls Mat Blacks consultant started considering a return to garden bowls. However by no means in her wildest goals did Blackbourn think about competing on the subsequent Video games herself.
To start out with, switching codes from indoor to out of doors wasn’t easy. Residing with rheumatoid arthritis, Blackbourn felt apprehensive concerning the bodily challenges she may face. However when the 31-year-old mum of two discovered she may very well be eligible for Para classification, she determined to see the place garden bowls may take her.
The next yr she grew to become a world champion. Now she’s sure for the World Cup in Kuala Lumpur beginning this week – shaping up as a severe contender for subsequent yr’s Commonwealth Video games in Glasgow.
All of it occurred quicker than Blackbourn anticipated – particularly as she wasn’t satisfied she’d qualify as a Para bowler, regardless of affected by a lifelong power sickness.
“I’d by no means been concerned with any disability-type communities,” she says. “I most likely didn’t really feel like I absolutely fitted into that, however then I didn’t really feel I absolutely fitted into the able-bodied stuff both.
“It’s pure to listen to Para and consider wheelchairs and lacking limbs, and I don’t match that stereotype. However I’ve since discovered that the Para world is made up of an extremely broad and various group of gamers. Not all disabilities are seen. It’s been a beautiful studying expertise for me.
“I bear in mind leaving my first open incapacity occasion and feeling prefer it was the group I by no means knew I wanted.”
Being categorized as a B7 Para bowler – with restrictions in her power and vary of movement – has been a gamechanger, Blackbourn says.
“It was the primary time there was a perk to having a incapacity. It felt like a wee little bit of a silver lining to have these cool alternatives,” she says.
Her first break was being chosen to compete on the Multi Nations event in early 2023 the place she and associate, Julie O’Connell, gained silver within the girls’s Para pairs. They’d met for the primary time on the airport enroute to the Gold Coast occasion and gelled virtually instantly regardless of their 35-year age distinction.
Their successful partnership was confirmed later that yr once they took out the Para pairs title on the world championships. Unbeaten all through the event, they prevailed towards the world’s prime ranked aspect within the ultimate – a Scottish duo who’d gained Commonwealth Video games gold.
Topped the inaugural winners of the world championships occasion, Blackbourn’s return to the out of doors sport and classification as a Para bowler has serendipitously coincided with an increase in built-in occasions.
This week, when World Bowls stage a B6-B8 Para blended pairs occasion for the primary time ever, Blackbourn and associate Kurt Smith will step out for New Zealand. The six-strong Blackjacks workforce now on the World Cup in Malaysia (a brand new occasion on the worldwide calendar) additionally contains Goddard and Inch.
Since watching these two girls on TV three years in the past, Blackbourn has been shocked by the alternatives which have come her means.
“It’s positively been a whirlwind,” she says. “However clearly I like it, and I’m at all times going to seize alternatives with each fingers and provides it my greatest shot.”
Blackbourn attributes the pace of her success to the knowhow she introduced along with her from indoor bowls.
“There are positively a number of transferable expertise,” she says. “Most likely an important takeaway from enjoying indoor bowls is the pinnacle studying capability.”
Because it occurs, Blackbourn appears to have been born to be a Blackjack.
Recognized at 17 months previous with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, Blackbourn tried arduous to match her college mates – enjoying netball, cricket and basketball.
“I bear in mind being actually decided to attempt to sustain and do what everybody else was doing,” she says. “Did it have its challenges? Completely. Nevertheless it didn’t cease me.”
Across the age of 10, her mom launched her to the world of indoor bowls.
“It was completely totally different to what I anticipated,” Blackbourn says. “I feel I used to be anticipating a tenpin bowling lane. However regardless, I used to be hooked. One of many cool issues was folks understood what arthritis was. And I discovered it was simpler to play bowls in a flare than it was to do some other sport.”
When she was 14, Blackbourn grew to become the youngest Kiwi to win a nationwide open indoor bowls title – a file that also stands. She then set her sights on representing New Zealand.
However when she grew to become a mom at 18 – to her now 12-year-old son – she thought her dream of carrying the silver fern was “out the window”.
Nevertheless, her cousin Katrina Nukunuku, who performed for the White Sox nationwide softball workforce, had some sage recommendation for her.
“She instructed me: ‘If you wish to make the New Zealand workforce, being a mum doesn’t cease that, you understand. Discover a strategy to make it work and go on the market and do it’.”
Along with her cousin’s phrases ringing in her ears, the sleep-deprived new mom went to nationals and made three finals. It was sufficient to see Blackbourn named a Mat Black.
In her early years of enjoying for the Mat Blacks, the mother-of-two says she wrestled with ‘mum guilt’ at instances and copped judgmental questions on the place her younger kids had been. Having navigated being each a mom and an athlete for over a decade now, she’s liked seeing extra sportswomen return to sport after beginning a household.
“It’s nice to see an increasing number of mums persevering with their excessive efficiency lives. I like to see it normalised,” she says. “I feel the dial has shifted and if I had been to do all of it once more now, I don’t assume I’d expertise the identical guilt or societal stress.”
A private assistant at Bayleys in Hamilton, Blackbourn loves the best way bowls unites her complete household. Each her sons – Lachie (12) and Tyler (9) – take pleasure in enjoying the game and he or she recurrently groups up along with her mom, Jenny Stockford, at Claudelands Bowling Membership. And her father, Chris Anderson, has grow to be an official Para assistant for the Blackjacks.
“Bowls looks like greater than only a sport,” Blackbourn says. “It’s positively extra of a connection piece.”
She additionally loves the best way the social and aggressive sides of bowls intertwine, with leisure and elite bowlers all enjoying in the identical tournaments at instances.
“In bowls, you get to satisfy your heroes.” And in the end, play alongside them on the world stage.
The New Zealand workforce for the 2025 World Cup in Kuala Lumpur in November:
Teri Blackbourn (Para blended pair, Para girls’s singles); Kurt Smith (Para blended pair, Para males’s singles); Katelyn Inch (girls’s pair, girls’s singles); Selina Goddard (girls’s pair, girls’s singles); Keanu Darby (males’s pair, males’s singles); Finbar McGuigan (males’s pair, males’s singles)
