Clearly unhappy that she had allowed a week to go by without setting a pb or breaking a Club record, junior Erin Hainge was even more focused than ever on Sunday. She was in no mood to allow the damp conditions to affect her. Erin, like everyone else, had turned up in waterproofs in the expectation of it being cold and wet. While it was a bit drizzly to start with, it was also rather warm, and several protective layers were shed before the shoot had even started. By mid-morning the rain had cleared, and most were struggling to keep cool rather than stay warm. None of this bothered Erin in the slightest. The previous week her longer distances had let her down but not this time. Erin was on target from the get-go and every distance was better than the one before. The switch to the smaller target faces at the half-way stage made no difference as her arrows peppered the inner X ring of the Gold. Erin’s final six arrows yielded a perfect score of 60 and the combined total saw the youngster add 70 points to her pb to shatter her own Club record and break 1300 for the first time.
Elsewhere on the field fortunes were mixed. After a rocky start to the Outdoor season Alex Allen-Snell was back on song in the Gents WA 1440. A relatively poor 90m distance still put him some 40 points ahead of rival Danny Cowin. Danny, who seemed to be dialled in with the sighters, tightened up as soon as scoring began and a miss with his second last arrow at the longest distance did his morale no favours. Alex, who also had a miss, simply brushed it off and concentrated on the good points of his shooting. This optimistic approach served him well, a solid 70m led to one of his best ever 50m totals and buoyed up by this Alex exploded at 30m taking his score over 1100 and leaving Danny almost 200 points behind.
The only person suffering more than Danny was Barbara Harris. A solid first distance gave Harris the hope that her form had finally returned but a catastrophic start at 60m, wherein her sight mark was massively out of whack, saw her scores plummet and the misses start. Barbara couldn’t find her range until the last half dozen by which time it was too late. An embarrassing seven misses at 50m and a further two at 30 brought the tally up to ten. Her final total put her some 200 points short of the kind of scores she routinely produced at the beginning of last season.
Rhys Moore triumphed yet again in the Gents Compound division. Even with a rocky 70m he finished 87 points ahead of Dave Moore. In the Ladies Compound Joy Gough’s hard work at 60m to put herself back on track after a poor start at 70m, was completely undermined by a dreadful 50m and an average 30m. Joy found herself 126 points adrift of Aalin George who, like Rhys and Erin, broke the 1300 barrier to take the win.
Barebow specialist Stan Gorry added 34 points to his pb for the Long Metric III and it would have been more but a miscalculation about finger placement at the start of second distance saw him put several arrows over the top of the target. Pete Mumford (Compound), David Craine and Peter Howland (Recurve) all attempted a Short Metric in the afternoon session with varying degrees of success.
Results: Gents WA1440 – Recurve: 1.A.Allen-Snell 142/1108/25/8, 2.D.Cowin 142/917/9/3. Compound: 1.R.Moore 144/1347/70/27, 2.D.Moore 144/1260/45/17. Ladies WA1440 – Recurve: B.Harris 134/937/10/5 sb. Compound: 1.A.George 144/1315/60/19, 2.J.Gough 142/1189/24/7. U14 Metric IV Recurve – E.Hainge 144/1301/62/27 CR. Long M III – S.Gorry 68/470/4/0pb.
Isle of Man Archery Club 