The compound squad from the Isle of Man Archery Club travelled to Bowmen of Glen near Leicester for a challenging two-day WA720 & H2H tournament, featuring ranking rounds in the morning followed by head-to-head matchplay in the afternoon. Each morning’s WA720 qualification round determined the seedings for the afternoon eliminations, where archers faced off over 15 arrows, with the highest score progressing to the next stage.
Saturday began strongly for the Manx side, with Rhys qualifying in 3rd place, Westy 6th, Ethan 8th and Les 10th. Les was unfortunately knocked out in the opening round, while the remaining three progressed into the quarterfinals.
Ethan faced the tournament’s number one seed in a tightly contested match but narrowly missed out on progression. Rhys and Westy then met in an all Isle of Man quarterfinal, with Rhys edging the encounter to book his place in the semi-finals and eventually the gold medal match.
In the final, Rhys went arrow for arrow with the top seed for much of the match. However, a single dropped point late on proved decisive, with Rhys taking an impressive silver medal finish for the day.
Sunday brought tricky conditions, with difficult winds and the arrival of several archers from the Great Britain squad adding to the challenge. After qualification, Rhys again led the Manx contingent in 4th place, with Ethan 8th, Westy 11th and Les 14th. All four received byes through the opening round, but after several close matches only Rhys advanced through to the quarterfinals, setting up a repeat clash of Saturday’s golf medal match.
The match once again proved incredibly close throughout, but an unfortunate arrow drifting into the 8 ring late in the contest ended Rhys’s hopes of revenge and brought another strong run to a close.
Alongside the individual competitions, both days also featured a team event, based on the combined qualification scores of each club’s top three archers. The Isle of Man team produced an outstanding performance across the weekend, taking team gold on both days.
Back at home the a few club members also turned out to brave the breeze and shoot a WA720 with the usual suspects in Johnathan and Erin taking the clear win.
WA720 –
Gents Recurve: 1.J.Gordon 72/570/10, 2.R.Hainge 69/481/7, 3.M.Smith 64/340/2. Ladies Recurve: 1.E.Hainge 70/502/10.
WA720 (60m) –
Gents Recurve: 1.D.Craine 69/433/4. Ladies Recurve: 1.E.O’Hara 63/290/3.
Metric 122-50 –
Gents Barebow: 1.R.Mitchell 43/203/0. Gents Longbow: 1.P.Howland 28/143/2.
Isle of Man Archery Club 