With the Euronations competition at Lilleshall looming on August Bank Holiday Weekend and the squad short on practice, it was decided to hold Sunday’s shoot no matter what the conditions. Major Competitions are rarely cancelled for bad weather except in cases of lightning storms or extreme wind conditions and, with a couple of team members on board who have had no experience of international shoots, it was felt that the squad needed to train for all eventualities. So, in intermittent rain and blustery conditions the eight man squad, plus two other Club diehards, attempted yet another WA metric round.
Danny Cowin, Alex Allen-Snell and James Hill lined up in the Gents Recurve division to shoot a WA 70m. Alex was hoping to back up the decent score he had put in on the Thursday evening. Danny was looking to continue his improvement in form and James was looking to catch up on range time he had lost due other commitments. James got off to a flying start opening up a 7 point lead over Alex. Danny made his best start of the season and was lying just 1 point further back. James put in another decent dozen total but Alex had found his range and turned the 7 point deficit into a 6 point lead. Two of Danny’s next six arrows were poor, one missing the target all together, and although he rebounded with the next six, and shot consistently well thereafter, his chances of victory were gone. Alex just kept putting in consistent scores to take the win by over fifty points. James shot well over the first half of the shoot but seemed to lose concentration after the break and his dozen totals began to drop and he had to settle for third place.
Lone Lady Recurver Barbara Harris had four misses over the shoot only one of which she could blame on the conditions. Her score sheet was one of peaks and troughs and a tired looking last dozen meant she failed to break the 500 target she had set herself.
It was a straight face off between Rhys and Dave Moore again in the Gents Compound and once again Rhys romped home to victory.
In the Barebow section Lesley Sleight put in a season’s best score in spite of miss late on. Stan Gorry, his bow tweaked by Pete Mumford, was delighted to add 50 points to his pb for the round and break 400 for the first time. Stan seems to have been bitten by the bug of competitive Outdoor shooting and looks to be enjoying himself. Pete Mumford, who has shelved his Compound bow in recent weeks in favour of Barebow, did just enough to stay ahead of Stan and take the win.
Jacob Brookes was the only junior in action on Sunday shooting a Short Metric (50/30m). He had a bit of a slow start at the first distance taking a while to get used to the poor conditions but he finished strongly. His performance at the 30m distance was rock solid and he had a lot of positives to take away from the shoot.
Results WA 70: Gents Recurve-1.A.Allen-Snell 72/547/9/3, 2.D.Cowin 71/491/8/4, 3.J.Hill 72/459/3/0. Ladies Recurve- B.Harris 68/493/4/1. WA 50: Gents Compound- 1R.Moore 72/653/23/10, 2.D.Moore 72/629/18/3. Ladies Barebow- L.Sleight 71/480/7/1. Gents Barebow- 1.P.Mumford 71/417/2/0, 2.S.Gorry 71/411/2/1pb.
Isle of Man Archery Club 