The Eastern Counties Ladies did the Region proud last weekend in the first EPA Women’s Triples Qualifier held at Thurmaston, nr Leicester.
Vanessa Webb leads the way in first place with team mates Angie Jamieson (E.Midlands) & Debbie Elcome (Southern), who finished the day unbeaten.
They started very tentatively against a team from the Northern region and were trailing 7-0, but tightened up their pointing and went on to win 13-9.
In rounds 2 & 3 they won 13-7 & 13-4 against a Southern team and a Southern/Chilltern mix. Round 4 was a much sterner test for them when they came up against the strong Northern team of Angie Gaughan, Christine Best & Clare Bicknall. It was a tight game which they won 13-11, and they finished the day off with a comfortable 13-2 win over East Midlands.

Lying in 3rd place out of 20 is the all Eastern Counties Region team of Viv Middleton-Sams, Wendy Ridehalgh & Clare Courtney, who had an excellent day winning 4 of their 5 games. The first game was a comfortable 13-2 win over a team from York in the Northern Region. The second game got off to a terrible start, losing 6 on the first end, which they failed to recover from. This was against the strong Northern team which took 11 points off the top team of Webb, Jamieson & Elcome, and they went on to finish one place ahead in second, also with 4 wins.
In round 3 the ECR team defeated a team from the I.O.W 13-8 and then went on to an excellent 13-7 win over the much fancied Huntleys from Chiltern, Myra, Amy and Sarah and Jennifer Cooter from Kent.
The Eastern ladies then end the day against another Northern side, winning 13-5 to finish 3rd overall.
Star of the team was Viv Middleton-Sams who was on fire with her shooting and was taking out every boule she went for, no matter what distance it was, and backed up by some accurate pointing from her team mates it was a very successful day. They are now looking forward the next qualifier on 17th March at Harrow.