In near perfect conditions the archery Club assembled at Greeba to test themselves against a full WA 1440 – three dozen arrows shot at each of four distances: 90/70/50/30m for the Gents and 70/60/50/30m for the Ladies.
Without any Recurve competition, Danny Cowin joined Compounds Rhys and Dave Moore on the 90m boss. A change of string and arrow rest during the week had thrown Danny’s sight marks out and he lost valuable points at each distance dialling them back in. Nevertheless, he managed a season’s best score and fell just 1 point short of the 1000 barrier. Rhys Moore continued his domination of the Gents Compound with an emphatic win over his father David, who finished over 100 points off the pace.
Joy Gough and Aalin George faced off in the Ladies Compound, but Joy was hampered by equipment problems. A new clarifier was fraying the string and the peep itself was not lining up with the sight as she drew up. This caused her to fling arrows wide of centre, which translated to misses on the smaller target faces of the 50m. Joy’s final total was not indicative of the kind of form she is in, and it was a very frustrating day for her. Aalin George had an easy win, but her timing issues were still a problem. Under strict rules of shooting at least two arrows of every end would have been misses as she was well outside of the 4 minutes per 6 arrows time frame.
Barbara Harris also had no direct competition in the Ladies Recurve but kept Joy Gough and Peter Howland (shooting the 50+ Metric 1 – which is the Ladies 1440 with a different tag), company. Peter Mumford also shot the 50+ round alongside Aalin George. Harris has struggled with both her form and her confidence for over a year and her scores had dipped alarmingly in the latter part of the 2022 Outdoor season. However, Barbara was finally given some coaching advice that was so simple even she could follow it: Danny Cowin told her to “stop being a Muppet”. She stopped and put in a season’s best score well in excess of 1000. Hopefully this is the turning point – with Island Games just six weeks away, it had better be.
David Craine kept Sharon Griffiths company in a Metric III (50/40/30/20m) as Sharon was shooting all day for the first time and needs to build stamina. David took the honours but both shot well and the day was more about enjoying the shoot than chasing scores.
Erin Hainge shot a Bristol IV (40/30/20yds) to get some experience over yards ahead of the Junior Nationals later this year. Erin started slowly at the first distance but found 30 and 20 more to her liking and she set a new pb for the distance.
A sun-tanned Stan Gorry took on Colin Moore in a Barebow Long Metric 3 (50 & 40m). Stan struggled a little at 50m, arrows consistently going low, and Colin had a lead of 9 points going into the second distance. Here however fortunes changed and Stan took the win by 35 points.
Results: Gents WA1440 -Compound 1.R.Moore 144/1358/74/27, 2.D.Moore 142/1238/38/17. Recurve D.Cowin 143/999/10/3sb. Ladies- Compound 1.A.George 144/1283/45/20, 2.J.Gough141/1164/19/6. Recurve B.Harris 143/1062/19/4sb. Metric 1 P.Mumford(C) 141/1189/33/11. P.Howland(R) 133/803/6/3. Metric 3 D.Craine 135/854/7/2pb. S.Griffiths 132/795/4/2pb. Long Met 3 BB 1.S.Gorry 69/447/3/0, 2.C.Moore 69/412/1/1. Bristol IV E.Hainge 144/1152/80pb.
Isle of Man Archery Club 