With the forecast looking bleak all week, it was a relief when Sunday dawned bright and clear allowing the annual Senior Club Championships to go ahead. With everyone prepared for inclement weather, the surprisingly warm conditions had many removing thermal layers before the round even began. Everyone was glad to be back in action after TT and not even the threat of rain in the afternoon could put a damper on the upbeat vibe. The Championships were divided by age, bow type, gender and, in Ralf Mitchell’s case, ability. There was a tricky, swirling wind to deal with that caused some problems at the longer distances but that just added to the fun.
The Gents Compound was all about who was going to come second to Rhys Moore this year. Those aiming for ‘first loser’ included two others of the Moore clan, David and Ethan, and ‘outsider’ Andrew Westmorland. At first it looked as though the Moores were going to make a clean sweep of it. Dave carved out an 8 point advantage over Ethan at 90m, only to have Ethan come back at him at 70m to cut the deficit to just 2 points. Westie seemed out of it, languishing in fourth place. However, the lunch break and the move to the smaller faces for the last two distances did Ethan no favours. Dave was able to consolidate his grip on the runners up spot and worse still, Westie overhauled Ethan with a superb display at 50m to move into third place. Westie then began to take points out of Dave’s lead. With six arrows left Dave was clinging to a 4 point advantage. Both he and Westie hit the centre of the target with their next four. Westie notched up another gold with his fifth arrow but as Dave drew up to shoot, something ‘popped’ in his shoulder and the best he could do was a 5. Worse still, Dave found that he couldn’t draw up the last arrow and he recorded his first miss of the day. Westie could only manage an 8 but it was all he needed to win the battle for second. Meanwhile, Rhys happily shot up a storm to come within a hair’s breadth of a Grand Master Bowman score and retain his title.
The Ladies Recurve Championship was the usual two horse race between Charlotte George and Barbara Harris. Charlotte was a little unhappy with what she called ‘an average’ 70m but she was back on form at 60m and went on to post a season’s best score and lift the trophy for the second year running. Barbara’s campaign did not get off to good start. After nearly putting her string on upside-down, she arrived at the shooting line, drew up, and found that she had forgotten to put her sight on the bow. Old age is a sad thing. Nevertheless, Harris shot better than she had done in a long time, and thoroughly enjoyed the day.
The only other direct competition came in the Gents Barebow competition where the elder statesmen of Colin Moore, Stan Gorry and Ralf Mitchell were joined younger pretender Johnathan Gordon. Ralf spent most of the morning picking his arrows out of the grass. Stan Gorry put in a solid performance but couldn’t keep up with the pace set by Colin and Johnathan. Colin had the lead over the first dozen but Johnathan leap-frogged him over the second and just kept going to take the trophy at his first attempt.
Aalin George retained her Ladies Compound title. Pete Mumford did likewise in the Gents 50+ Compound and Peter Howland lifted the trophy in the Gents 50+ Recurve category for the first time. All three were unopposed in their respective divisions.
Isle of Man Archery Club 