At a glance
David Williams – 579 – 17th – 1/8
Andrew Howe – 502 – 13th – 1/16
Chris Skipper – 443 – 19th – 1/8
Stephen Fawcett – 428 – 23rd – 1/16
John Bowes – 416 – 24th – 1/16
Full Results
Southampton H2H Weekend 2013 Results V2.pdf
Report
The Southampton H2H competition presented the earliest start to a competition of the season, with assembly at 8.30 am, but that didn’t stop five SUAC members from having a go. Fortunately, being in Southampton meant that we didn’t have far to travel (or get lost). The format was to shoot a FITA 70 (or 50 if you’re compound) and then take part in a straight knockout – set scoring for recurves, total score for compounds.
Although there was a double competition over the weekend, SUAC opted to only shoot on the Sunday, which meant that we couldn’t take part in the Hereford round being shot across the road. However, the weather was bright, sunny, and suitable for sunburn, which made for almost perfect shooting conditions – if anything it was too hot! In the recurves, Andrew Howe seeded 13th with 502 to claim his 500 target badge, Chris Skipper seeded 19th with a score that was well off what he was hoping for, Stephen Fawcett (woop) seeded 23rd and John Bowes seeded 24th. In the compounds, David Williams qualified in 17th, which while not in last place, was the bottom person choosing to compete in the H2H.
The seedings meant that Chris and Andrew would play each other in the first round. Meanwhile, David faced an elimination round to make the last 16. Andrew’s serving started to undo itself, but it turns out that there are no equipment failures in the knockout round. Stephen sent Andrew towards Equipment Ewok David to see what he could do about it, although David was rather preoccupied. In order to speed up matters, Andrew then followed David with his bow while he was going to score his arrows. Unfortunately for Andrew, the experienced archer beat the novice 6-0 to cause an upset. David managed to edge out the 16th seed, taking the lead in the final end.
Stephen and John also went out in the first round, John out in straight sets, though Stephen made a game out of his contest. He somehow managed to win the first set with a score of 10, 3, M for a total of 13 while his opponent had a nice group of three 4s. However, a subsequent score of 26 was only enough to tie, and a score of 25 wasn’t enough to win the set as he eventually lost 7-3 to the 9th seed.
David then held his own against the 1st seed, only starting to fall behind in the 4th end of 5, while Chris took the lead against the 4th seed but eventually succumbed, ending SUAC participation in the competition. There was also a bizarre hold-up to proceedings as one compound match managed to pull out their arrows without scoring them for one end, as they were too busy chatting. However, the team stayed behind to follow the adventures of the Whitlock sisters, ex-SUAC members, while playing some sort of miniature finger cricket with a ball of foil, somewhat dubiously close to the shooting line, particularly due to some clean hitting from Andrew. Charlotte managed to come second in Saturday’s competition but only reached the quarter finals this time.
The team then went to visit Delco to bother Gary for a while at their competition, before making the short journey to Wide Lane for even more shooting, past the extortionately priced Thomas the Tank Engine railway that would not in fact take us in the direction of Wide Lane.
– Stephen Fawcett
