At a glance
Old Basing Siege Shoot – Double WA720, 11th September
Ally Miller (Ladies Recurve) – 524 and 555, 1079
Lloyd Fletcher (Mens Recurve) – 534 and 556, 1090
Matthew Wellman (Mens Recurve) – 451 and 442, 893
Hampshire Archery Championships – WA1440, WA720 + H2H, 17th/18th September
Saturday:
Ally Miller (Ladies Recurve) – 464 (9th seed), (3rd)
Lloyd Fletcher (Mens Recurve) – 456 (24th seed, 17th place)
Matthew Wellman (Mens Recurve) – 456 (25th seed. 17th place),
Sam Baldwin (Mens Compound) – 654 (8th seed, 9th place)
Sunday:
Ally Miller (Ladies Recurve) – 1142 (3rd and new PB!)
Matthew Wellman (Mens Recurve) – 850 (21st)
Sam Baldwin (Mens Compound) – 1292 (13th)
Chippenham Last Chance Tournament – WA1440, Double 720 24th/25th September
Lloyd Fletcher (Mens Recurve)
Sam Baldwin (Mens Compound)
Results can be found here:
http://www.chippenhamarchers.org.uk/
Match report
Back to the normal (boring) shoots, most people in September were shooting WA720s and W1440s in an attempt to get their national rankings.
As I was busy presenting at a conference in Germany, Matt Wellman provides the Old Basing Siege Shoot report:
Another competition, another early start but only a half an hour drive once everyone was collected by Ally Miller. The competition was held at Matthew Wellman’s old club Old Basing archers near Basingstoke. There may have been a slight diversion picking up Lloyd Fletcher as the Sat Nav assumed we wanted to go to the most popular place in Lloyd’s post code (Costco). The drive up was mainly uneventful apart from entering Basingstoke’s many roundabouts which are just confusing even to British drivers and those who have lived there. The Australian in the car was very vocal about this fact.
Having arrived at the ground, Matthew and Lloyd left Ally to set up her bow by the car as her bag was broken and went to find their respective targets. After setting up their bows, bacon butties were found and consumed. Much amusement was had over the spelling of Lloyd’s name as well as SUAC being represented as South Uni A. (Edit by David: The original spelling of Lloyd’s name is not presented here as this is a family friendly website…)
Practice started after assembly and as there was only a single detail, there were 5 ends before scoring began. The weather was very good at the start of the day with lots of sunshine and very little breeze: perfect shooting conditions. Both Lloyd and Matthew skipped the 4th end as they had worked out their sight marks. Matthew’s shooting can only be described as erratic during the morning, which continued for the rest of the day as he shot a 50 end followed by a 34. Lloyd and Ally continued to shoot at their normal standard.
Due to the single detail in the shooting, the round went very quickly with an hour of shooting seeing 3 dozen arrows shot. A short break was held before continuing to lunch in another hour. An hour for lunch allowed aching muscles to relax a little before 2 ends of practice were declared before the start of the second round. Having already got decent sight marks from the first round, everyone settled into a relaxed shoot which went very quickly. So relaxed in fact that there was an ice cream break with 18 arrows left to shoot as a van had arrived at the field.
With an early finish and after prizes were given out, everyone headed home with no more detours to random places in the same post code. All in all, a very successful and enjoyable shoot in brilliant sunshine with no wind to speak of.
Now, as I was busy learning statistics at a workshop in Germany, Matt Wellman provides the Hampshire Champs Shoot report:
The Hampshire County championships was one of the last outdoor competitions of the summer with a WA720 seeding round and then head to head match play on the Saturday, followed by a WA1440 on the Sunday. Ally Milled picked Matthew Wellman up early on the Saturday morning and proceeded to encounter every red light on the way out of Southampton. The rest of the journey was mainly uneventful apart from a cow being mistaken as a horse. It was very early, was their excuse.
At the ground, being mid-September, the wind had started to pick up and it was fairly cold as well. This continued for much of the day. Once the bows were setup, bacon butties were ordered. At this point Sam Baldwin and Lloyd Fletcher arrived after Sam having set a week day alarm for a weekend shoot.
The wind continued to prove tricky for everyone during the seeding round with arrows going off in all directions. Matthew got slightly confused partway through when looking down the scope as 2 longbow arrows were suddenly in his target despite not having any longbows on his target. The target next door however did. What made it even worse was the fact that they were good scoring arrows. The wind caused everyone’s scores to drop dramatically apart from Matthew, who shot 1 point lower than the previous weekend in perfect shooting conditions.
Lunch provided a short opportunity to rest before the match play started in the afternoon. Sam and Ally got byes for the first 2 passes as there weren’t as many archers in their categories as there were in the gent’s recurve. Matthew got knocked out in straight sets (0-6) as one arrow always seemed to go in the white or black. On the other hand Lloyd put up stiff competition for his opponent but was sadly knocked out as well (4-6).
It was now time for Sam and Ally to start. Sam had a fletch come loose in flight which sent the arrow off the face and sadly, ended his H2H with a 122 score. Ally on the other hand shot very well to go through to the quarter finals 6-2. Unfortunately, this meant going up against the number one seed. Who Ally beat 6-0.
Ally’s luck didn’t continue as well as it had in the quarters as she lost out in a place in the gold medal match 0-6. However, once into the bronze medal match, Ally managed a convincing victory of 6-2 to take the bronze medal.
Now it was back home to rest and recover for the second day of shooting.
Sunday dawned much brighter with very little wind in contrast to the previous day. The British weather on Saturday, however, claimed its latest victim as Lloyd pulled out of the Sunday shoot. Nothing very interesting happened until practise started, at which point Matthew shot on the wrong target and Ally found that someone else on her target had the exact same arrows and so they had to move target. The first 3 dozen arrows proved to be quite slow as the compounds kept getting equipment failures (Sam’s sight block came loose). No recurves were harmed during the entire shoot. Ally and Matthew were fairly pleased with their first distances and proceeded to shoot well through the next distance just as well. Matthew managed to shoot on the correct target throughout the morning.
Lunchtime came and the faces were changed to smaller faces with only the blue inwards. Ally started off fine with this but Wellman shot a 21 to start off with. He then offset this slightly to by shooting a 51 and a 50. The arrow gods started to laugh at this point as he then proceeded to shoot a 20. This may have had something to do with shooting on the wrong target even if it was the correct face. Ally on the other hand had no problem and continued to score highly.
The afternoon went very quickly with 6 arrow ends and it was soon the end of the day. Ally finished on a new pb of 1142, 40 points higher than her previous competition best, and Sam finishing on a respectable 1292 considering his first dozen at 90m with the sight block. Matthew finished with 850 which was about his season average. Ally found that she had managed to get the bronze in the County Ladies recurve so was understandably very pleased with her final competition for SUAC.
All in all, a very good weekend shooting if a little tricky on Saturday. Hopefully, next season will be even better for everyone.
