We’re still waiting for Tony to produce the final winners list, but in the meantime here is a short report and a host of images from yesterdays Club Championships.
The end of season was calling but Mother Nature decided to put on a late Summer show with the sun shining upon the eighteen archers. The wind was consistent and slight, giving no one the opportunity to complain that their arrows had been blown off target.
Thanks to Tony and his team of helpers the range was secured against all but the footballers and the targets were set up in time for sighters to be called as soon as everyone had got their own equipment ready. All the senior members were shooting a National 50 so we needed three targets one for each of the three bow types Recurve, Barebow and longbow. Everyone else shot at 30 yards. There were some very close results. Indeed the arrows on the 30 yards targets seemed very tightly grouped together. Tony asked members to take the opportunity to smash the club records but in the end the only thing smashed was the longbow scoreboard – I will name no names.
For our newer members this was a great introduction to shooting under competition conditions. Laura was busy explaining the rules for calling out the scores in groups of three arrows and the need to score misses loud enough for everyone to hear. At the end Tony and DOC sat together getting the scores into the laptop and checking that the scoresheets had been correctly completed and the columns totalled up correctly. DOC became quite anxious as he saw how quickly the delicious spread of food was vanishing from the table beside him. Many thanks to everyone who had made something for the food table or had brought something. And thanks to Linda who brought some apples from the trees in her garden overlooking the shooting line. We finished the day’s shoot with the award ceremony as Chairman Ruth dished out the medals and silverware to some very deserving medal winners. The star of the day was Zoey, whose trophy cabinet is now bulging. I think Alex is going to have to buy a new family cabinet.
The results sheet demonstrates some real achievements by club members as recognised by our
Chairman:
“I thought everyone did so well today. Both older members and new members were totally amazing. High quality shooting from all and such a friendly, positive atmosphere with so much fun. Of course I have no favourites…but I do want to give a huge congratulations to Zoey, not only did she take away 4 awards today but she won the spider award ( the closest arrow to the + in the gold of the middle of the target). She beat every single archer on the field to do this. Well done to this amazing junior archer.”
There were five new club records and two of our new archers achieved an Archer First Class score and one her Bowman 3rd class (a higher classification) along with experienced archers Alan Davies and Tony Rees. Overall, out of 18 archers 13 achieved Archer First Class or higher scores. Newcomer JP missed his first class score by one point.
Neil Whittey, who only acquired his longbow at the start of the season, was shooting with the big boys at fifty yards and came second out of the four longbow archers. Alan and Tony showed why they have been doing so well at Open competitions recently as over 50 year old barebow archers. The closest competition was between the three recurve archers all over 50s whose scores at 50 yards were 310-303-302. Kevin had to shoot well at 40 yards to maintain his lead and win.
So, who was the highest scorer, even beating her dad? A true overall champion and one to watch for the future.
