The Isle of Man crown green bowling community was shocked and saddened to learn that Heather Horsburgh passed away last Friday.

Heather was dedicated and worked extremely hard for the sport in the island.

A member of Peel Sunset Bowling Club from the early 1990s [upon her return to the island after retiring from teaching], she set up a junior section and coached young people who still play at the club today as adults.

During the 2000s she joined Isle of Man Crown Green Bowling Association’s ladies’ section committee, becoming a valued and supportive member when taking on the extremely difficult dual role of league results and press officer.

Her reports in the Courier each week during this time were always thorough, with lots of detail, and included many humorous comments that were always appreciated. Teams looked forward to reading who would be in the headlines!

Heather was also heavily involved and a great help when the Ladies’ Over-60s League was set up, continuing to be supportive and play a big part both at club and association level.

She joined the competitions committee and ran many of the association competitions including the junior girls’ merit and became competitions secretary two years ago.

Heather was elected as Association Ladies’ Section vice-president in 2017 and at last November’s AGM became president for the 2020-21 seasons.

She was inducted into IoM Crown Green Bowling’s hall of honour at the presentation evening last October. It was an honour so well deserved and of which she was very proud.

Heather worked tirelessly for her club, the Association Ladies’ Section and was a member of the team who ran the two IoM Bowling Festivals each year.

She was always willing to help out wherever she could, whether it was providing a quiz for social evenings (very challenging) or always being one of the first to arrive to help set up the tables for the Ladies’ Section coffee morning fund-raisers.

In addition, she ran the book stall for many years and analysed results to provide figures to be used for calculating handicaps.

That was Heather - hard-working, versatile and dedicated but she was also never afraid to challenge when she thought things were wrong.

It is very hard to overestimate the contribution she made to the sport of crown green bowling in the island and she is going to be greatly missed by her club, the Association’s Ladies Section and by the wider community including many of the friends she made from the UK during the festivals.

Our thoughts and sympathy are with her family and friends at this very sad and extremely distressing time.

l Heather was also chair of Peel Charity Shop.