Morley lawn bowls coach wins second WA Bowls Coach of the Year award and sets sights on juniors

Morley Bowling Club coach Ken Perks received the award at the Bowls WA Awards last month.

The 72-year-old has been coaching lawn bowls to players as young as 10 for 30 years.

Perks said the club had junior players who played with older ones in the pennants competition.

“Some of them come in and they are 14-15 and we teach them how to bowl, and then they are playing with 70-year-olds,” he said.

“We have a lot of guys who have done it and we have talked to them about how they felt.

“Their response was it would have been nice to have the other two or three guys who were around 15 or 18.”

Perks said he taught students from North Morley Primary School and South Ballajura Primary School.

“We have done the pilot program there (North Morley), I am going back to them sometime this week to talk to the principal again, if he wants me to keep it going,” he said.

“I want to slot back in the 10-year-old grade again and build the numbers that way.”

Perks said he had also contacted Weld Square Primary School and planned to contact Camboon Primary School.

Another aspiration of his was for each club to have their own junior clubs in the future.

“If we can get a little thing going here and get it all set up, then we will go and present it to all these other clubs to do the same thing and then we would be playing Morley, Inglewood or Yokine on weekends,” he said.

“The kids will be playing against the kids.

“The option is still there if they want to come and play with the bigger boys too.”

Perks said he was working with Bowls Australia to implement more lawn bowls programs at schools.