Youthful Charlene aiming for the top

White coats and white hair are usually the mainstays of a typical club bowling green.
But one 20-year-old hairdresser from High Wycombe has different ideas.

Marlow Bowls club player Charlene Turpie has been bowling for the last eight years and the England under 25 international is adamant that bowling is a sport not just for the more senior citizen.

“It is a really fun game to play,” she said. “It is very social and you can always have a laugh when you are playing.
“When I first started I thought that it would be really boring. But I’ve met so many nice people and been to so many places.
“I’ve played in tournaments all over the place and I have now got friends from all over the country.”

Charlene is such a talent that she has been a member of the England under 25 squad for the past two years and next month she will taken part in the trials to make it three years in a row.

The under 25s play only play fixtures against the home nations but Charlene has lofty ambitions to play at an even higher level.

“I definitely want to make it as a full international,” she added. “It is not going to be easy as the standard is really high but I really want to play for the senior side. It would be such an honour to represent England at the highest level.”

As a 12-year-old, she was cajoled into taking up the sport by her father Nigel, whose been playing for more than 20 years.

She recalled: “My Dad bowls a lot and really wanted me to play. He took me along one day and I thought I’d play for a month and that would be it. I think I started to really like it when I entered my first competition when I was 12. I am really competitive and because I was quite good I really liked it.”

So what do her friends think about her choice of sport? - “They think it’s quite funny that I play. Some of them laugh about it but my real friends are really behind me. I don’t mind if they come and watch, and my boyfriend is really supportive.”