At a glance
Portsmouth round results:
David Williams, Senior Gents Longbow, 274 (1st)
James Murawski, Senior Gents Barebow, 334 (3rd)
Tom Reed, Senior Gents Compound, 565 (4th)
Nick Wilson, Senior Gents Barebow, 247 (4th, PB)
Ziheng Guo, Senior Gents Compound, 560 (5th)
Michael Sessions, Senior Gents Compound, 490 (9th, PB)
Match report
After a long Sunday helping with novices and shooting in the range (Ziheng fell asleep for most of the afternoon), SUAC’s non-recurve archers travelled all the way up to Surrey Uni for the first leg of SEAL Non-Recurve this year. SEAL NR is for those who do not shoot recurve and therefore don’t normally get a chance to shoot amongst the other archers of SEAL. This is its second year after it was successful last year and several SUACers wanted the opportunity to shoot well again this year.
However, the first problem to overcome was how do we fit 7 people (Abbie Hall joined us as support as she was injured and couldn’t take up her shooting space on the line), with 3 compounds and 3 longbows/barebows into 2 cars? This is harder than it sounds, and required David to support all three bows on his leg for the entire journey in the front seat of Tom’s car, whilst James (diagonally opposite in the back) made sure they didn’t jab him in the eye. Michael joined Tom’s car, and Ziheng went with Nick with Abbie navigating (and the pizza). The original plan was to convoy with Nick in the front, however as soon as it was pointed out to Tom that we also had a SatNav (ie David’s phone), he went past Nick’s car and decided he didn’t want to convoy anymore, much to the amusement of Abbie in the other car. Other than a silly moment when Tom got confused between Power Rangers and Lord of the Rings, the journey passed without too much incident.
On arrival, the second problem arose: how do you get out of a car with that many traditional bows in it? David’s lower half of his body had gone to sleep, leading to some interesting scenes in the Surrey Sports Park car park. Nick’s car by this point stunk of cheese from the pizza which Abbie found most amusing. We found our way inside, cracked open the pizza but had to wait for a futsal match to finish meaning we didn’t get access for a while. However once we did, bows were strung, targets set up and archers got ready.
The shoot was itself enjoyable. Nick was along for the ride just to see what he could do with a flatbow. He would eventually finish fourth and the BUCS qualifying score for barebow despite only having picked up the bow earlier in the day. James shot well to come third. David survived a brutal (not-so-brutal) attack by Surrey’s captain (who was also shooting longbow and the only other one there) as she dropped her bow into David’s eye, causing his glasses to pop off and the lenses out of the frames. Luckily, another Surrey archer fixed them. Michael Sessions started strongly in the men’s compounds but had a couple misses leading to a score of 490, but one which would still qualify him for BUCS. At one point in the compounds, there were only a handful of points between the top 6 archers, but unfortunately for Tom and Ziheng, they were both pipped at the last.
Overall it was a very fun shoot, and by the time it came to leave, it had started raining cats and dogs, but everyone got home ok and were shocked to find out that they had all qualified for BUCS! The next SEAL Non-Recurve leg is in February, please let the competitions officer know if you want to do this and join in the fun! The full results can be found here.
