Several days of glorious weather culminated in a gorgeous summer Sunday at Greeba. Conditions could not have been more perfect: warm, sunny and without a breath of wind; the stage was set for high scores and good times. Unfortunately, for most of the archers the day turned out to be a colossal disappointment which couldn’t be over soon enough.
After a couple of weeks of Imperial rounds the Records Officer switched back to metric with a WA 1440. Numbers were down due a variety of reasons: Rhys Moore was in Bristol at a friend’s stag do, Dave Moore was busy clearing up the Royal Manx Show ground, James Hill was putting in a shift as a life-guard and Stan Gorry had gone down with Covid after a weekend in Edinburgh. This left seven of the usual suspects to tackle the round of the day, while two other put in half day rounds of their choice.
Danny Cowin turned up looking like his face needed to be ironed (it had been Karaoke Night at the Whitestone). He was the only man to attempt the full Gents 1440 of 90/70/50/30m which he did not find enjoyable. For once though Danny’s growls of displeasure and tuts of exasperation chimed exactly with what pretty much everyone else was feeling. Danny was using new, longer arrows for the first time in competition and was trying to get used to the feel of them. He was perhaps guilty of trying too hard, a curse among archers which causes them to tense up when they need to be relaxed and is ultimately counter-productive. The sight marks Danny had harvested for 90m earlier in the week seemed to be wildly out of whack and he lost most of his sighter arrows over the top of the boss before he could dial it in. Danny wasn’t the only one to struggle with sight marks though. Pete Mumford shooting a Metric 1 Barebow and employing a technique known as string walking, thought he had nailed his aiming point for 70m, only to send his arrows well over the top. At 60m his, carefully calculated aiming point. sent them underneath.
Barbara Harris (clad in shorts and taking flack for the glare off her legs) for once made an excellent start at 70m scoring 90 points for the first dozen, before immediately switching off and sending her arrows into the outer, low scoring rings. Barbara had misses at every distance including 30m and was painfully aware that she needs to sort out her mental approach or things are unlikely to improve. Boss companion Joy Gough had an equally frustrating day, managing only two 10’s at 70m, Joy was further hampered by a thread coming loose on her string which obstructed her peep and made aiming difficult. By the time she had finished 60m Joy had abandoned any thoughts of high scores and was treating the day as a training session.
It has been mentioned on a previous occasion that accidently shooting an extra arrow is known at the Club as ‘doing a Mumford’, in honour of Pete Mumford who is frequently guilty of this. On Sunday however, it was another Peter’s turn – Peter Howland. Mr Howland was so ‘in the zone’ that he actually did a ‘double Mumford’ and shot 8 arrows in one end instead of 6. This cost him two 9’s, as you have to discount your highest scoring arrows- the one he winged out into the 4 zone he got to keep.
It was not all doom and gloom. Sarah Kennedy shooting the round for the first time put in a solid First Class score of 874. Colin Moore, who only stayed for the morning session, shot a pb on a Tradbow WA 720 (50-122). Star of the day once again was junior archer Erin Hainge who, in between hiding from the sun under a giant golfing umbrella, put in another tremendous score for an age category one higher than she is required to shoot.
Results WA 1440: Gents Recurve- D.Cowin 137/877/3/1. Ladies Recurve- 1.B.Harris 139/977/16/6, 2.S Kennedy 135/874/7/3pb. Ladies Compound – J.Gough 142/1175/24/5. Metric 1: Barebow -P.Mumford 119/694/4/1. Recurve- P.Howland 134/768/6/0. Metric 4- E.Hainge 144/1214/34/18. WA 720 Tradbow- C.Moore 70/421/2/2.
Also shooting Cliff Graves, whose scoresheet for the Short Metric was incompletely filled in and so the result does not appear here.
Isle of Man Archery Club 