The “Oddcast” Podcast: Episode 20, The World of Lawn Bowling (with Tim Mason)

Now that football season is over, Eric and Sascha begin expanding their knowledge beyond the gridiron to different sports. So naturally, they started with lawn bowling!

With the help of Tim Mason, an international medalling lawn bowler with Team Canada, the guys explore the sport of bowls (as those in the know call it). Mason explains the accidental way he discovered the game, his rise to international competition, and now his efforts to grow the sport in Canada. Along the way he teaches the guys the ins and outs of the game and makes it sound like even our slow-witted hosts could pick up the sport relatively quick.

It’s a different format for the Oddcast, but change is almost always a good thing. Heck, this podcast is certainly more interesting and eye-opening than hearing Eric and Sascha continue to riff about Ryan Mallett. So enjoy Tim Mason!

(External Link)

If you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing, feel free to jump to …

5:20: Tim discusses his past as a professional hockey player and general sportsman, and how he stumbled onto the sport of lawn bowling by accident when he literally took a wrong turn in his car:

I had played a lot of hockey, small role in the pro circuit for a while junior university hockey, so that’s what I was known as a hockey player and it’s kind it built my persona the way I am today: eSport, slo-pitch provincials, ball hockey, Pepsi junior tour for golf you name it. When I moved [to West Vancouver] about  … twelve years ago now, I took a wrong turn to the gym. [I had] never even seen the sport [of lawn bowling]. I didn’t know what it was, I’ve never seen a lawn bowl, didn’t know the rules, zero. I was on my phone … and missed the turn … to get to the gym. … [I] parked my jeep and walked through the gate and I said, “What are you guys doing?” … no joke. … . I had no idea [what it was and] two and a half weeks into playing the sport I was in the provincial championship and then a little over a year later I won my first Canadian title.

12:02: Tim recounts playing in the 2006 North American Championship, medalling for Canada at the 2007 Asia Pacific Championships in New Zealand, and some of his world-wide lawn bowling adventures:

It was about a year and a half in, I think it was ’06, I had played in the North American championship …  we won that. Beat the Americans which is always good to do … Then it was off to New Zealand. I was … lucky enough to win a silver and a bronze medal for our country.  … [I travelled] to Hong Kong. I found myself in Belgium. I was all of a sudden running around the world … I think it’s four different continents [on which] I represented Canada, from going from a wrong turn…

35:50: Tim talks about one of his greatest personal accomplishments, representing Canada at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and meeting the royals:

Eric: If you had to say [there’s] one event that … I want to win … Is there a marquee event?

Tim: We are not in the Olympics because it goes by countries, they are not playing a lot of bowls in South America … [The] Commonwealth games was a huge accomplishment for me personally, to be able to attend that. …  I got to meet Kate Middleton the duchess, I got to meet Prince Harry who came to me and stuck out his hand. It was really neat just to be engulfed in that and have the experience.

(Photo Credit: Mase55 at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], from Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)