Friends Across the Pond
By Clare Greenwood
The scorecards will eventually disappear into filing cabinets.
The Friendship Trophy - and the friends made in its making in one of the most beautiful parts of Central Park - will last much much longer.
When Billingshurst Bowling Club accepted an invitation to travel to New York, it would have been easy to assume the bowls would be the story. It usually is. Results, scorelines and silverware have a habit of taking centre stage.
Instead, something rather different happened.
Three clubs met. One from New York, one from Ireland and one from a Sussex village. By the end of the weekend it no longer felt like three clubs at all.
The first introductions came, as they often do in sport, over bowls.
Friday's friendly fixture gave everyone the chance to meet properly. Hands were shaken, names exchanged, and the gentle rhythm of the game quickly dissolved any sense that these were strangers meeting for the first time. Excellent bowls were rolled throughout the afternoon, but the conversations between end, laughs and cross-Atlantic camaraderie lingered longer.
(For a more in-depth appreciation and evaluation of the actual game, check this link here from my new colleague, sports fanatic and NYC-based sports writer, Buck….a whole other story).
Sadly, the following morning, New York had other ideas.
Persistent rain washed out Saturday's tournament before it had the chance to develop, bringing the competitive side of the weekend to an abrupt end.
Curiously, it may have been the best thing that could have happened. Instead of spending the day watching scoreboards, everyone simply spent time together.
Sometimes sport's greatest contribution is not the game itself, but the time it creates around it. That became even more obvious at the Gala Dinner that evening.
Alongside players from all three clubs were local dignitaries, representatives from the British and Irish communities and the British Consul, all gathered to celebrate a friendship that had somehow travelled more than 3,000 miles.
The speeches were warm, thoughtful and emotional. The stories became steadily funnier.
There was, inevitably, the now infamous attempt to explain the difference between bowls and balls - a conversation that somehow left everybody more confused than when it started. And one that carried on to an almost very personal search of Roger on the flight back.
Then came Linda.
Asked to introduce a little laughter yoga to the proceedings, she somehow persuaded an entire room of bowlers, guests and dignitaries to abandon any remaining self-consciousness and simply laugh together.
It shouldn't have worked. It worked beautifully. In fact, laughter yoga may be an even more fitting appraisal of what life at the BLBC is actually about.
Watching three clubs dissolve into uncontrollable laughter over something so gloriously ridiculous felt, somehow, like the perfect summary of the weekend.
Grassroots sport has always had an unusual ability to make strangers feel familiar remarkably quickly.
This weekend simply proved that geography doesn't really matter. Neither, as it turned out, did nationality.
By Saturday night, as the familiar yellow cabs turned up to whisk everyone into the hubbub of New York, or the warmth of hotel beds, there were no longer New Yorkers, Irish visitors or Sussex bowlers.
There were simply friends saying goodbye.
The Friendship Trophy was presented. Photographs were taken. Promises were made to meet again.
And for a few moments the Atlantic Ocean seemed an awfully small thing.
The bowls had brought everyone together but the people did the rest.
Sometimes the bowls takes a back seat but the people never do