Submitted by Angel Gomez
I am writing this letter to help people understand why the City Council should reject even “reconsidering” their unanimous vote of July 18 to remove four Canary Island Pines next to the Spreckels Lawn Bowling Green on D Avenue.
I will turn 18 this Friday and just graduated from Coronado High School. My father, my older brother and my sister are all graduates of Coronado High School. I have been lawn bowling since I was seven years old, having started by attending a Twilight Open Bowling evening with my parents and family. I was the first CHS student to benefit from the offering of Lawn Bowling as a hybrid P.E. class option.
Last December, I participated in the International Indoor Bowls Council Junior Championships in Belfast, Ireland and will participate next December in Scotland. I am also headed to Florida in November to play in the U.S. National Championships. I am thinking about the Olympics in Australia in 2032 where Lawn Bowling will be added as a trial Olympic sport. For that, I will need to have a lot of practice and competition, which I hope to get in part as I attend college locally, which will allow me to continue playing on the Spreckels Bowling Green of Coronado.
I have just returned from a family trip around California where we played on four bowling greens in the Southwest Division including San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto, and Cambria. I have been playing in tournaments lately on greens such as San Diego, Newport Harbor, Laguna Beach, Laguna Woods, Oaks North, Irvine, and Long Beach. I can assure you that none of these greens have trees around their edges. San Francisco removed trees to protect the green that is the oldest green in the U.S. Laguna Woods just north of us had to remove Canary Pines that extended roots under their club house to their greens. I stand firmly by the City Council’s unanimous and well researched and evaluated decision to remove canary pines, which never should have been planted in that location.
Angel Gomez
