A Brief History at Our Club: In 1989 the newly form Vancouver Croquet Club (VCC) was playing croquet on the rough grass at Jericho Beach across the road from the hostel. They wanted a better quality lawn so they approached the nearby West Point Grey Lawn Bowling Club with an offer to rent one of their lawns. After heated discussion at Board meetings the offer was eventually accepted. This led to the resignation of some club members who opposed the decision, including Ed Angel, the founder of the Ed Angel League. The two clubs continued this association until in 2017 they amalgamated to become our current club.
Croquet Games: In all Croquet games the objective is to get more of your team’s balls through the hoops than the opposition team. Croquet games fall into two groups that are quite different in the mallet strokes and strategy skills required to play them. One group is Golf Croquet and a variation called Snake-in-the-Grass Croquet. The other group is Association Croquet and a variation called Ricochet Croquet. Because of it’s history, Association Croquet is considered the basic game of croquet but Golf Croquet is by far the most popular croquet game world-wide.
What and When we play: We play all of these croquet games at our club but Snake is by far our most popular game. Not only was it created at WPG by Pierre Dunn when he was a member of the Vancouver Croquet Club, of all the games, we think it requires the best combination of skill and strategy that allows players of different skill levels to play together and have fun. Compared to bowls, croquet has relatively few players with no leagues and only the occasional tournament. However, we play daily throughout the year and decide what game to play based on the consensus of the group that shows up on the day. Occasionally we set what’s to be played in advance using our on-line booking system. Using this system players can book when they want to play, see who’s booked and see the games to be played in advance. The current booking sheet is displayed below.
Croquet Guests: Members are allowed to have one daily guest and any one person can be a guest a maximum of three times per year. There is a small guest fee and the guest information should be entered in the Club’s Guest Book located in the clubhouse.