The archers were promised blue skies and bags of sunshine, what they got was mugginess and clouds of midges. The round of the day was a WA 1440 – 36 arrows at each of four distances 90/70/50/30 for the men and 70/60/50/30 for the women. Other rounds were available for those who could only stay for half a day.
There was no wind to speak of, so the day looked good for high scores. In the Gents Compound division Dave Moore, Pete Mumford and Rhys Moore all recorded season’s best scores. Rhys once again proving that he was in a different league by easily breaking the 1300 barrier and claiming victory by 53 points.
Elsewhere on the field Joy Gough (Compound) was doggedly going about the task of getting a minimum of 300 points at each distance so that she could break 1200 by the end of the day. She succeeded at 70m and again at 60m, even though she forgot to shoot one of her arrows and so had to put it down as a miss. Then after the lunch break came the 50m and disaster. Having moved across to a different boss to be with the rest of the Compound shooters, Joy completely lost her sight picture and range. Her opening half dozen were dire, and a miss pretty much ended her chances. Joy recovered at the final distance but fell agonizingly short of her self-imposed target.
Like Joy Gough, Barbara Harris (Recurve) had no direct competition in her division. Similarly, Barbara struggled at 50m but recovered at the shortest distance. As usual Harris was unhappy with her performance, but she put in a season’s best and notched up another Bowman equivalent score. Her scores are heading in the right direction, but she seems to have lost her love of the sport.
Alex Snell found his way back to the field and went head-to-head with James Hill. Alex was just hoping to get through his first full day of shooting, so he was delighted to post a Bowman equivalent score. James had to settle for second place had the consolation of adding 4 points to his pb.
Of those shooting half a day Ralf Mitchell continued his ‘archery journey’ by adding 66 points to his pb for the Long Metric I (70 & 60m). Little Ellyn Hill started her journey by shooting a Long Metric V (30 & 20m).
Peter Howland added 31 points to his pb to take the honours over newbie Jonathon Gordon who was shooting in his first competition. Both of these seniors could have taken notes from Junior Jacob Brookes who added 68 points to his pb for the Short Metric to outscore them both. Theresa Graves (Compound) continued her fight back from injury by adding 19 points to her pb at this Club.
Results WA 1440: Gents Compound- 1.R.Moore 144/1329/65/28sb, 2.D.Moore 144/1266/45/12sb, 3.P.Mumford 144/1241/38/14sb. Ladies Compound- J.Gough 142/1197/31/5. Ladies Recurve- B.Harris 142/1054/13/5sb. Gents Recurve- 1.A.Allen-Snell 141/1065/23/6sb, 2.J.Hill 135/870/10/3pb. Short Metric: Gents Recurve- 1.P.Howland 68/466/6/1pb, 2.J.Gordon 65/383/4/0pb. Junior Gents Recurve- J.Brookes 71/474/5/0pb. Ladies Compound- T.Graves 68/544/9/2pb. Short Metric V- E.Hill 54/239/2/0pb.
Isle of Man Archery Club 