On Sunday afternoon after a weekend of bowling on the Railway greens she headed to Tweed Heads to join other players from around the country Australian Indoor Bowls Championships.

The competition is played in a knockout format with each round consisting of two games with a third knock out in the event of a tie.

Marshall qualified for the event back in May and she said last Saturday she was looking forward to the contest even though she had played a pretty solid week of bowls including the NSW Pennants final in which her side placed fourth among the 16 regional finalists.

Then on Saturday she was part of a Under 25s representative team consisting of herself from the Railway Bowling Club and three lads from Crookwell Bowling Club in the Southern Tablelands District Bowls Association Inter Zone Four Rivers, Four Creeks representative games played in Goulburn over the weekend.

This competition highlighted the fact that lawn bowls is no longer an older person’ s sport as looking across the greens even the senior teams consisted mostly of players under 50.

With colourful uniforms and bowls that looked like oversized smarties on the green it was a far cry from the sport of the 1990s where uniforms were all cream and it was hard to distinguish one team from another and the bowls were distinguished by the ring around the bias.

Marshall said her love of the game both indoors and out has come from playing social twilight bowls when she was a youngster, playing with her mum.

From there it was the encouragement of coaches Joe Cooke and Neil Thornton who would spend hours on the greens showing the youngsters the finer points of the sport they loved.

Marshall has been a three or four times scholarship holder with the South East Regional Academy of Sport where she learn more about what it takes to be more than a social bowler.

“What I like about the game is that it is a contest of strategy, rather than one of speed and strength,” she said.

“As a singles player you are only matched against an opponent and you have to anticipate them and counteract what they are doing to get closest to the jack.

“There is still a lot of tactics involved and I really enjoy the thinking part of the game as well as the accuracy.

“In pairs triples and fours you have to play as a team and work together to get as many bowls closer to the jack than your opponents.

“You have to be able to rely on each other have confidence in your ability and work out a team strategy.

“It can be very exciting and satisfying when you win.”

On Monday at the Tweed Heads Bowling Club, Marshall faced Natalie Noronha from Merrylands in the opening knockout matchup.

Unfortunately Marshall was amongst the 50 per cent of contestants knocked out, going down 8.4 to 8.8.

Marshall said that if she got knocked out she would use her time before she has to return home to visit relatives living up that way.

She works two casual jobs at present to support her sporting ambitions and is also saving toward going to university next year to undertake a degree in business studies.

“I don’t know how much time I will have for bowls then but it is certainly a great way to take a break from study,” she said.

For the quietly spoken 19- year-old her sport has been a good way to meet people from other clubs and make many friends.