Club members were in action both on and off the island at the weekend. Two archers travelled to England to take part in a combined WA25/18m round hosted by the Chorley Bowmen, whilst another fifteen shot a Worcester at Onchan.
Rhys Moore and Barbara Harris braved extremely rough seas on Saturday morning to make the trip to Bamber Bridge near Preston to take part in a combined WA25/18m round. The round consisted of 60 arrows shot on a 60cm triple face at 25m in the morning and 60 arrows on a 40cm triple face in the afternoon – combined total of both rounds deciding the outcome. Both Rhys and Barbara began with the disadvantage of not having sight marks for 25m as the hall at Onchan is too small. Both archers went into the two ends of practice arrows with estimated sight marks that were dropping short of the mark. Rhys managed to dial in quite quickly but it took Barbara not only the practice arrows but the first dozen of the actual round to get her arrows up out of the 8’s and into the centre. This obviously put a dent in her score but she was lying in second place by virtue of golds scored at the half way stage. Rhys was consistently hitting 9’s but was frustratingly missing the Compound 10 zone by millimetres. At the break Rhys was lying in seventh place but his score of 562 had broken the IoM Club Record held by Adrian Bruce since 2009.
After a fifty minute break for lunch, the shoot continued straight into scoring without any practice arrows. Once again Rhys found the 9 zone but did not hit enough 10’s to make an impact on the top places and he finished in sixth place. However his combined total meant that he set another Club Record beating the existing record held by Pete Mumford by 18 points. On an adjacent boss Barbara started steadily and seemed to hit her stride over the second dozen but too many visits to the 6 zone began to have an impact on her score and all Harris really wanted was to shoot a clean WA18, something she has not managed this year. It looked like she would achieve her ambition with three arrows left to go but Harris suddenly lost focus and accidently lined up on and loosed an arrow into the wrong target, thus recording her one miss of the day. Harris was angry with herself for missing the chance to break 1000 and frustrated by her poor record over 18m this season, she was however pleased to pick up a medal for third place.
Meanwhile back on home soil fifteen Club members turned up to shoot a Worcester. The Worcester is shot in ends of five arrows with a maximum score of 300. While it is exactly the same size as a single face WA18 target, for some reason archers always find the black and white Worcester face easier to shoot. David Hicks, Peter Howland, Lily Priestnal and Jane Berry were all shooting the round for the first time and thus automatically recorded pb’s. Four other archers who had shot the round before also recorded personal best scores. Jacob Brookes added 4 points to his pb, Eric Lutes added 8 points to his, David Smith added 18 points and the consistently improving James Hill added 22 points his pb. Pete Mumford, who has several times shot a maximum round, was unhappy to drop 9 points over the course of the shoot to record the highest Compound score of the day. Danny Cowin muttered his way through the morning on route to his inevitable victory in the Gents Recurve with Dave Berry playing the bridesmaid yet again. The only surprise of the day came from Toby Young who unaccountably had a miss but was nevertheless the highest scoring junior.
Results: Chorley WA25/18 R.Moore – 120/1125/46 NCR,pb( 25m 60/562/22NCR,pb + 18m 60/563/24). B.Harris 119/999/23pb(25m 60/513/15pb, +18m 59/486/8) Worcester – Gents Compound – P.Mumford 60/291/51. Ladies Compound – J.Gough 60/288/48. Gents Recurve – 1.D.Cowin 60/273/38, 2.D.Berry 60/264/28, 3.D.Hicks 60/227/14pb, 4.E.Lutes 60/218/14pb, 5.P.Howland 57/180/7pb, 6.D.Smith 55/179/10pb. Ladies Recurve – J.Berry 60/219/14pb. Gents Barebow – C.Moore 59/217/14.Gents Longbow – G.Makepeace-Warne 45/130/5. Junior Gents Recurve – 1.T.Young 59/263/31, 2.J.Brookes 59/232/18pb, 3.J.Hill 60/230/13pb. Junior Ladies Recurve – L.Priestnal 57/183/8pb.
Isle of Man Archery Club 