Conditions were less than ideal for shooting at Greeba on Sunday. While it was relatively sheltered on the shooting line, a bitterly cold crosswind played havoc with the arrows at the target end of the field, especially at the longer distances. The round of the day was a WA1440 (3 dozen arrows at each of four distances -909/70/50/30m for the Gents and 70/60/50/30m for the Ladies), but a variety of metric rounds were shot by those who could only devote half a day to their sport.
It was a straight head-to-head contest between father and son pairing Dave and Rhys Moore in the Gents Compound. At 90m the heavier poundage of the Compound bows gave them more of a chance against the tricky crosswind than Recurver Richard Hainge who recorded several misses, but it was still challenging, nonetheless. No prizes for guessing that undefeated champion Rhys Moore continued to be undefeated, with Dave finishing 130 points adrift of his youngest son.
Lone Lady Compound Aalin George was still getting to grips with her new bow and just failed to break the 1300 barrier. A circumstance which did not please the multi-medal winner as she heads towards the challenge of another Island Games.
Richard Hainge, who had been forced to do a U-turn back home to retrieve daughter Erin’s quiver, arm guard and finger tab from the kitchen table where she had left them, had the shooting line to himself in the Gents Recurve. Despite the previously mentioned misses, Richard managed to record a pb for the round and should break the 1000 barrier before long.
Erin Hainge kept a clean scoresheet in the Ladies Recurve, but the difficult conditions affected the arrows coming out of her slightly underpowered bow at 70m and her score was nowhere near the heights of the previous week.
Les Corran (Compound) and Tom Rogers (Recurve) kept each other company in a Metric 1 (same as a Ladies 1440 but with a different label). It was the first time shooting a full day’s competition for both men and they each recorded decent pb’s in their respective divisions.
With only half a day at their disposal Charlotte George and Peter Howland shot a Long Metric 1 (70 & 60m). Charlotte had not intended to score her round, having just returned from Wales Archery where the technicians had rectified a problem with her bow that had kept her out of shooting for several months, but Peter put her name on a scoresheet, so she logged a score after all. The wind did not prove to be too much of a problem for Charlotte, but she was a little light on golds. Peter on the other hand did find the conditions troublesome with 28 of his 72 arrows failing to find the target.
The final archer in the morning line-up was Barebow specialist Stan Gorry, who cut a lonely figure as he battled the elements in a Long Metric 3 (50 & 40m).
The afternoon session brought an interesting selection of archers to the shooting line to tackle the Short Metric round (50 & 30m). Pete Mumford found himself up against Westy (the Westinator) Westmorland in the Gents Compound division. Westy had used the morning session to make some adjustments to his set-up and what ever he had done certainly worked as he handed out a comprehensive beating to Pete who finished 86 points behind.
Joy Gough faced off against Catherine Irving-Potter who was making her debut in a Compound competition having switched over from Recurve. Both women had a couple of misses, but Joy’s years of experience were reflected in a scoreline that gave the veteran archer the win by a margin of 172 points.
David Craine shot unopposed in the Gents Recurve version and enjoyed himself as usual.
Juniors Lula Brown, Anastacia Schnetler and Emily O’Hara all struggled against the wind, but it was Lula who faired the best taking the win by a considerable margin over Emily in second and Anastacia, a little further back, in third.
Results: WA1440 – Gents Compound- 1.R.Moore 144/1348/80/32, 2.D.Moore 143/1218/29/9. Ladies Compound- A.George 144/1299/50/13. Gents Recurve- R.Hainge 138/974/9/2pb. Ladies Recurve- E.Hainge 144/1013/11/3. Metric 1- Gents Compound- L.Corran 142/1132/15/8pb. Gents Recurve- T.Rogers 143/1040/17/6pb. Long Metric 1- Ladies Recurve- C.George 72/556/9/1. Gents Recurve- P.Howland 44/208/0/0. Long Metric 3 Barebow- S.Gorry 71/457/2/0. Short Metric- Gents Compound- 1.A.Westmorland 71/640/31/13pb, 2.P.Mumford 68/554/9/2. Ladies Compound- 1.J.Gough 70/571/10/5, 2.C.Irving-Potter 70/499/5/0pb. Gents Recurve- D.Craine 64/385/2/2. Junior Girls- 1.L.Brown 64/410/4/2, 2.E.O’Hara 48/277/2/1, 3.A.Schnetler 38/261/4/0.
Isle of Man Archery Club 