There was a full house at Onchan on Sunday with nineteen archers looking to better their scores. The round of the day was a Worcester, 60 arrows shot in groups of five, with a maximum score of 300. Recurve and Juniors shoot on a single face target with scoring zones from 5 down to 1, while Compounds shoot on a five-spot target, one arrow to each target with only the 5 and 4 zone available.
The largest field of the day came in the Gents Recurve division, Dave Berry, Peter Howland and Eric Lutes were joined for the first time this season by Danny Cowin and Ralf Mitchell. Ralf was returning from illness and had never shot the Worcester before. He found the concept of shooting five arrow ends and the change to scoring unnecessarily complicated.
Nevertheless, Ralf shot well enough to bounce one of his arrows off the back of another already in the target. Upon verification of this partial ‘Robin Hood’ the ‘bouncer’ was awarded the same value as the arrow it hit. Unfortunately, in the excitement, Ralf only shot four arrows instead of five and had to record a miss anyway. Peter Howland continued his run of steady improvement by adding 45 points to his pb to take fourth place. Eric Lutes put in some fine groupings on his way to adding 18 points to his pb for the round and taking third place into the bargain. Lack of practice did not seem to have dented Danny Cowin’s form as he led from start to finish. A loss of focus towards the end of the shoot gave Dave Berry a glimmer of hope but he too suffered a loss of form and Danny claimed victory by a clear 12 points.
Colin Moore was still trying to get his eye in in the Barebow but it is early days.
It was the usual two horse race in the Ladies Recurve with Jane Berry and Barbara Harris on the shooting line. Unfortunately, an equipment failure three arrows in to the round put paid to Barbara’s challenge as she put two arrows off the target before she realised that her arrow rest had come apart. A hasty repair by Pete Mumford allowed Harris to continue but the problem was not solved, and Barbara put in her worst Worcester score for years. Jane Berry on the other hand, put in another excellent round adding 47 points to her pb to not only record a thumping victory but also the highest Recurve score of the day male or female.
In the Gents Compound division Billy Lightfoot was playing odd man out against Rhys Moore, Pete Mumford and Dave Moore, in that Billy was the only one not to have maxed the round. Rhys has done it so often that it has become boring. However, with the newly found zeal of a man half his age, Mr Lightfoot approached the round looking to win. He immediately dropped three points in the first ten arrows while the others all recorded perfect scores. Billy made an adjustment to his bow and from that point on did not drop another point. Lack of practice due to work/study commitments soon took its toll on Rhys as he dropped a total of 7 points over the shoot to surprisingly come in last. Dave and Pete put in perfect scores for their next ten arrows, and but by the time they had reached the final ten arrows of the shoot both men had dropped two points. This meant that they were tied on 248 with Billy just one point behind them. Dave maxed the next five arrows, but Pete dropped a further two points which took him from equal first to third place. It looked to be all over but out of nowhere Dave Moore missed handing victory to a delighted Billy Lightfoot.
In Ladies Compound Joy Gough had a bad day at the office, suffering two misses and recording a score that was well below her best.
In the afternoon session six of the Juniors turned up to test their skill. Toby Young and Jacob Brookes were making their first appearance indoors this season and both appeared to be a little lacking in focus. Nathan Kinrade started well but tailed off a little towards the end of the shoot. Tilly Ashton and little sister Lily Priestnal enjoyed a good shoot with Tilly adding 22 points to her pb and Lily adding 18 points to hers. James Hill gave himself the challenge of shooting on the five-spot face to improve his accuracy. James put in commendable performance to record a decent benchmark score and looks to be continuing the good work of last Indoor season.
Results Worcester: Gents Recurve- 1.D.Cowin 60/264/29, 2.D.Berry 60/252/25, 3.E.Lutes 60/236/15pb, 4.P.Howland 59/225/19pb, 5.R.Mitchell 57/177/6pb. Gents Barebow -C.Moore 59/211/17. Ladies Recurve- 1.J.Berry 60/266/30pb, 2.B.Harris 55/211/14. Gents Compound- 1.B.Lightfoot 60/297/57pb, 2.P.Mumford 60/296/56, 3.D.Moore 59/293/57, 4.R.Moore 60/293/53. Ladies Compound- J.Gough 58/269/37. Junior Boys- 1.T.Young 59/245/21, 2.J.Brookes 59/225/17, 3.N.Kinrade 57/184/7. Junior Girls- 1.T.Ashton 59/242/21pb, 2.L.Priestnal 58/198/9pb. Junior Boys Five-Spot- J.Hill 52/221/23pb.
Isle of Man Archery Club 