The weather forecast suggested that the overnight rain would stop by 9am and would not resume until 1pm. However, the handful of archers who turned up on Sunday experienced intermittent showers throughout the morning which became steadily heavier as the day advanced. The Compound archers heading for Island Games tackled a WA1440, but the remaining Recurve archers contented themselves with a Long Metric round which was confined to the morning session.
The Gents Compound saw Rhys and Ethan Moore take on Andrew Westmorland, with Ethan looking for revenge after his third place showing in the Club Championships of the previous week. A slow start by Westy opened the door in part but Rhys continued his unbeaten run to take the win. Westy managed to break 1300 for the second week in a row but Ethan was consistent enough throughout the day to secure second place.
Lone Lady Compound Aalin George, plaintively parroting her catchphrase of “do I have to?”, had an uncharacteristic miss in an otherwise solid round and looks to be in good form ahead of the games.
It was a straight head-to-head between Jonathan Gordon and Peter Howland in the Gents Recurve division as they joined Charlotte George and Barbara Harris in a Long Metric 1 (70/60m). Peter was unable to put up much of a challenge as large number of his arrows ended up in the grass. Jonathan showed an excellent return to form after the disappointment of the previous week to take the win by a clear margin of 375 points and record the highest recurve score of the day.
Barbara Harris, making her first appearance on the shooting field since March, turned up with the intention of simply trying to make it through the morning. Her recent illness had left her very weak and by the time she had finished the sighters she was regretting turning up at all. Her first 6 scoring arrows were okay, but by the end of the first dozen she was struggling and made the decision to just shoot as many arrows per end as she could without doing herself damage. This naturally put a huge dent in her score, but it was at least a start. Charlotte George put in her usual commanding performance to take the win by 233 points.
As the rain intensified towards lunch and with the threat of lightning, Dave Moore made the decision to cancel the afternoon session for all but the Island Games teams. Dave decided that discretion was the better part of valour and decamped after lunch the lunchbreak himself leaving his fellow team mates to get some wet weather experience in preparation for the likely conditions on Orkney next month.
Results: WA1440- Gents Compound – 1.R.Moore 144/1359/78/32, 2.E.Moore 144/1331/67/23, 3.A.Westmorland 144/1305/49/12. Ladies Compound-A.George 143/1314/62/12. Metric 1-Gents Recurve – 1.J.Gordon 72/587/9/3, 2.P.Howland 46/212/2/1. Ladies Recurve- 1.C.George 72/567/9/2, 2.B.Harris 51/334/0/0.
Isle of Man Archery Club 