A replacement sight after the one she was familiar with broke, a lack of field time due to the Manx GP and a last-minute change of limbs was not exactly the build-up to a major event that Erin Hainge was looking for. The change of limbs had the most impact. The youngster was left with only one Club session in which to gather fresh sight marks and get used to the heavier poundage before travelling across to defend her u14s title at the Cheshire Junior and Open Tournament at the weekend. That it had an effect was obvious as she had a few unaccustomed misses at the first distance, another later at 20m and was timed out on her final arrow, but there is a reason that Erin is a champion. Unfazed by the misses and staying calm under pressure, Erin celebrated her birthday by retaining her title with a score of 1174 – 22 points clear of her nearest rival and lifted the visiting girls’ trophy as well. A great result!
Back on home soil the women of the Club decided to try something a bit different. Charlotte George elected to shoot the Gents 1440 (90/70/50/30) for a laugh despite never having attempted the 90m distance before. She recorded a handful of misses at 90 (only two of them went into the grass) but was on solid ground with the rest of the distances and went on to break the Club Record for a woman shooting the gents distance set by Barbara Harris back in 2017. Charlotte was somewhat disappointed that she had no male competitors to shoot against – Alex Allen-Snell and Danny Cowin being “missing in action”, while James Hill was doing the “student thing”, though he did manage to crawl out of bed for the afternoon session. Joy Gough and Barbara Harris took advantage of their advanced years by shooting the Ladies 50+ round (60/50/40/30). Harris was returning from injury picked up at the Island Games and was using a new set of longer, heavier poundage limbs deployed on her old Hoyt bow without the benefit of any sight marks. She had one miss at the first distance but seemed much happier having abandoned the Win&Win carbon bow she had unsuccessfully tried for the last two seasons. Both she and Joy enjoyed the luxury of a full face target at 50m and they each set a new Club Record for the round – Recurve and Compound respectively.
Pete Mumford gave his brand new Hoyt Stratos an airing on the Gents 50+ round (70/60/50/30m) and will no doubt eradicate the misses once he gets used to it. Peter Howland contented himself with a Long Metric II (70/60). Colin Moore, Ralf Mitchell and, the ever tanned, Stan Gorry lined up in the Barebow Long Metric III (50/40m). Colin took an easy win over Stan, who couldn’t find his range at the first distance, with International Man of Mystery, Ralf bring up the rear. Bill Callow had the Tradbow field all to himself over the same Long Metric III distances and was the only one of the four to keep all of his arrows on target.
Results: Gents WA1440 C.George 139/995/22/7CR. Ladies 50+: Joy Gough(C) 144/1255/31/14NCR. B.Harris (R) 143/1053/8/3NCR. Gents 50+ P.Mumford(C) 142/1240/44/19. Long Metric II P.Howland 66/376/0/0. Long Metric III: Barebow – 1.C.Moore 71/492/5/0, 2.S.Gorry 66/409/0/0, 3.R.Mitchell 50/250/0/0. Tradbow- B.Callow 72/435/6/2. Short Metric – J.Hill 72/573/14/9.
Isle of Man Archery Club 