The bad weather forecast for the weekend passed through sooner than expected and Greeba provided almost perfect shooting conditions on Sunday. The round of the day was a WA 1440 (three dozen arrows shot at each of four distances 90/70/50/30 for the Gents and 70/60/50/30 for the Ladies).
Only four archers turned up to shoot: Joy Gough, Peter Mumford and Jane and Dave Berry. Unfortunately, Dave found the strain put on his recently replaced knee joint too much to bear and he abandoned the shoot. Of the remaining three only Pete Mumford managed to keep all his arrows on target. Joy Gough recorded two misses and Jane Berry notched up five. Peter Howland showed up for the afternoon session and shot the final two distances of the WA1440 which is designated a Short Metric.
Meanwhile David and Rhys Moore along with Barbara Harris travelled to Loughborough to attend a two-day shoot hosted by the Bowmen of Glen in the hopes of picking up valuable ranking points. The tier two event consisted of a 720 (72 arrows shot at a single distance 70m for Recurve/50m for Compound) followed by a Head to Head to determine the winner on the Saturday, with a separate WA1440 on the Sunday.
Rhys shot well over the Compound 50m distance to qualify in 8th place for the afternoon’s Head to Head round. Here again Rhys shot well but was up against Jamie Harris who was on fire and Rhys finished 9th overall. Dave Moore, hampered by an ongoing hand injury could not improve upon the qualifying position he had achieved in Newcastle earlier in the season. Dave qualified in 17th place and remained there.
Barbara had difficulty finding her range and simply could not find the centre of the target. She recovered a little after the break and ended up qualifying in 13th place which was an improvement on her Newcastle showing so the day was not a complete loss. Harris went out in the second round of the H2H to finish in 9th place overall.
The WA1440 shoot on the Sunday should have just been a bit of fun and to start with it was. Conditions on Sunday morning were poor, windy with intermittent rain showers which suited Barbara Harris down to the ground. She put in a decent distance total at 70m and cantered through 60m. Simultaneously Rhys was shooting up a storm on the Gents side, notching up a pb of 328 at 90m and going on to record a pb and New Club record of 664 for the Long Metric (the combined total of the longest two distances – 90 & 70m) which put him in 2nd place on the leader board.
Things looked to be shaping up nicely for the afternoon session but sadly it was not to be. The weather improved and the wind dropped much to Barbara’s annoyance. Dave’s hand problem became much worse over the day and it was sheer determination that saw him through to the end of the shoot, but a miss at 30m was indicative of his struggles. Rhys put in a lacklustre 50m total and followed it up with a poor showing at 30m which saw him drop back to 5th place. Meanwhile Barbara Harris was having an interesting time on the Recurve side. At all of the previous shoots Barbara had attended, the shorter distances were shot on a full size 80cm face in groups of three arrows. On this occasion however, in order to accommodate six arrow ends, individual six zone targets (scoring 10 down to 5 only) were used, which presented Harris with an entirely different sight picture. Already aware that the sight marks she for her home field were markedly different from those at Loughborough Barbara made the relative adjustments she thought necessary only to find her arrows going well high. She moved her sights constantly but put four arrows wide of the mark to her growing disbelief. Her distance total was the worst she had recorded for years and it was only when she came to reset her sight for the 30m that she became aware that the sight itself was broken. Barbara managed to force it into position but could not make the mechanism work for the fine adjustments required. If this wasn’t bad enough Harris took a mouthful of pop only to find a foreign body in it. On spitting the fluid out she discovered it was a live wasp. It was difficult to say who was more startled Barbara or the wasp. Still it had the sense not to sting her, probably because it was aware that Barbara’s venom was stronger than it’s own. Between malfunctioning equipment and a mouthful of insect Barbara could be forgiven for a lack of focus; her 30m score was an embarrassment and she finished in 7th place.
Results Greeba WA1440 – Gents Compound: P.Mumford 144/1288/39/12. Ladies Compound: J.Gough 142/1232/40/12. Ladies Recurve: J.Berry 139/925/9/4. Short Metric: P.Howland 62/378/3/2.
Isle of Man Archery Club 