The Outdoor season got underway at Greeba on Sunday. The conditions were wet under foot and the sun and high temperatures of Saturday had given way to a cutting wind that made shooting at distance a challenge. The round of the day was a WA 1440 – 36 arrows shot at each of four distances 90/70/50/30m for the men, and 70/60/50/30 for the women, shot as part of the Club’s Scratch League.
In the Gents Compound the usual suspects, Dave and Rhys Moore and Pete Mumford, tried to find out who was ‘king of the castle’ yet again. Rhys Moore got out of the blocks quickly, while Pete Mumford struggled a long way back in third. Dave Moore couldn’t really find any consistency as he lurched from an X10, to a miss, in the space of six arrows but he managed to keep his nose ahead of Pete through the first two distances. It was not until the end of the second dozen at 50m that Pete managed to draw level. Dave then opened up a 3 point lead over Pete with his next six arrows but immediately threw away any chances he had of holding onto second place by having yet another miss. Pete Mumford was in his element at 30m taking the distance honours and securing second place. Rhys Moore meanwhile just kept plodding on, putting in a steady but unremarkable shoot to take the first win of the season by a clear 64 points.
Danny Cowin found himself the only competitor in the Gents Recurve division, which was perhaps just as well, having shot only 12 times in last six months Danny had lost his ‘feel’ for archery. The blustery conditions didn’t help matters and he haemorrhaged points as a number of his arrows went wide of the mark. After the lunch break the weather improved significantly and so did Danny’s shooting. His scores improved with every dozen he shot, and his final six arrows were more in keeping with his talent.
Barbara Harris was likewise the only female Recurve archer in action on Sunday. A nocturnal animal, Barbara is never at her best during the hours of daylight and she certainly seemed half asleep as the shoot began. A miss at the first distance was due to poor shot execution, but the miss Barbara had with her first arrow at 60m was down to sheer stupidity – she put her 50m sight mark on by mistake. At 50m she elected to shoot on the much smaller target face used by the Compound archers which only scores down as far as 5 and put two arrows just outside of the scoring area. A third miss at 50m stretched her Zen like calm to breaking point and clearly distracted her. As Harris was about to start the last distance, a niggling doubt caused her to double check the sight mark she had set – which was just as well because she had dialled in her age rather than her 30m sight mark. The proper mark produced the best 30m total for Barbara for two years and remarkably, in spite of the misses, she had added 8 points to her pb and broken 1100 for the first time.
A range of other rounds were shot by archers who could only stay for half the day. Junior Gents Recurver James Hill and Barebow archer Chris Crompton ended up shooting a Long Metric 4 (40&30m) because the Records Officer put the wrong sized target face up for them. It gave them both a good mornings practice and James Hill set a new Club Record for his age group. Chris, who was shooting Outdoors for the first time ever, also set a new Club Record in the Barebow category.
Joy Gough was joined by Colin Moore for a Long Metric I (70&60m). They were honours even after the first distance but Joy, who was still trying to get over a chest cold, began to tire towards the end of the second distance. Colin shot well at the second distance, but his ongoing wrist injury meant he was nowhere near his best score for the round.
Josh Trafford, recently returned to archery after and extended break due to injury, threw himself in at the deep end by attempting a Long Metric (90&70). Josh struggled with the conditions and was tiring rapidly towards the end of the morning.
In the afternoon session Toby Young (u18’s) took advantage of the good weather to add 9 points to his pb for the Short Metric 1 (50&30m). While Nathan Kinrade added a splendid 49 points to his pb on his way to victory over Jacob Brookes in the Short Metric 3 (30&20m).
Results: WA1440 – Gents Compound-1.R.Moore 144/1295/46/14, 2.P.Mumford 144/1231/43/9, 3.D.Moore 142/1209/36/12. Gents Recurve-D.Cowin 133/852/10/3. Ladies Recurve-B.Harris 139/1102/22/0pb. Long Metric-Gents Recurve J.Trafford 65/337/0/0. Long Metric 1- Ladies Compound-J.Gough 71/566/6/2. Gents Compound-C.Moore 72/593/7/4. Long Metric 4- u16 Gents Recurve-J.Hill 72/588/12/3pb,NCR. Gents Barebow-C.Crompton 72/557/10/4pb.NCR. Short Metric-u18 Gents-T.Young 71/511/7/2pb. Short Metric 3-u14 Gents-1.N.Kinrade 72/546/11/1pb, 2.J.Brookes 71/513/8/0.
Isle of Man Archery Club 