The turnout was low on Sunday. Two of the usual suspects, Joy Gough and Pete Mumford, celebrated their 30th Anniversary in snowy Harrogate, while others were in action at the Indoor Nationals further south. This left only six club members to shoot a Portsmouth on home soil.
Charlotte George’s run in to the Indoor Nationals was not the best. A six hour delay to the flight getting her back to Island from Las Vegas meant a very quick turnaround to pick up her car and gear before getting on the boat to England. A long drive through freezing fog to reach the venue at Stoneleigh saw her arrive drained and exhausted. On top of this she had chosen the two biggest competitions of the Indoor season: the Nationals and the Back-to-Back to make her return to international archery after being out of the sport for a decade. It was a big ask. Never having shot at Stoneleigh before, the competition used to be held at the Ricoh Stadium, Charlotte had no idea how challenging the lighting conditions were going to be. She unfortunate to draw a boss that had one of the spotlight directly in front of it which cast confusing shadows and meant no one on the boss could tell what was an arrow and what was merely shadow. Charlotte’s boss mate kept shooting into Charlotte’s target which added to the confusion and Charlotte ended up putting two arrows into the same face of the triple WA 18 Target that formed the round. This one mistake meant that she missed the cut for the head-to-heads and finished 35th. Still quite an achievement given the circumstances. After a good night’s sleep Charlotte was back in action next day in the Back-to-Back. She was the only archer in the competition who did not have a National ranking. The lighting was better than the previous day and she acquitted herself well- won 1 round, drew 2, lost 2. Both the archers she lost to were Team GB members and one of them was the British Number 1. Charlotte finished 17th and was justifiably proud of herself.
Back at Onchan Dave Moore got through the morning on will power. He was less than happy with his performance (60/570/36) but still comfortably beat Andrew Westmorland (60/553/14) in the Gents Compound.
The largest field of the day came in the Gents Barebow. None of the men involved were in particularly good form. Colin Moore (60/444/4) tutted and growled his way through the morning on his way to second place behind Chris Crompton (59/476/8), who was a long way from his best. Stan Gorry (59/404/2) had to settle for third.
Barbara Harris and Johnathan Gordon were the only Recurve archers in action. Johnathan(60/496/12) had a sub par morning, losing fletchings from his arrows either at the boss, or in flight and he failed to break 500 for the first time this season. Harris (60/535/22) on the other hand showed a huge improvement in form and was pleased with her morning’s work.
Isle of Man Archery Club 