DORIS Thompson is bracing herself for a busy 12 months after taking over as president of the Kent Women’s Bowling Association.

Doris, 61, is the first member of Victoria Park club in east Kent to take over the position. By coincidence, in November, 2004, another member of the club, Peter Johnson, will become president of the Kent Men’s Bowling Association.

Doris said: “Victoria Park is such a small club, with only about 80 or 90 members, that it is a really big honour for us to provide a county president two years in a row.”

Explaining why she first took up playing bowls in 1985, she said: “I used to watch my brother Vic (Pidduck) and late husband Terry playing at Victoria Park and starting thinking ‘I could do that’.”

So Doris joined Victoria Park, where she has enjoyed several trophy successes, including winning the club’s ladies’ pairs title this year in partnership with Janet Bruce.

She is also a former ladies’ captain and then, in the summer of 2001, agreed to be nominated for the position of junior vice-president of the Kent ladies’ association, which meant that she would automatically become county president at the end of this year.

“I had never thought about doing anything like this but both my children, Andrew and Suzanne, said ‘Go for it mum, because dad would have wanted you to’.”

Husband Terry, a popular and well-known figure in the Deal Sunday Football League, died in 1999. Terry served on the Deal league for more than 30 years, mostly as secretary, a record that Mrs Thompson could herself emulate.

She has been on the committee for more than 25 years and is now combining the jobs of secretary and treasurer, saying : “I am glad that I have kept the link with the league going after Terry’s death.”