At a glance

Saturday
Matthew- 440 and 450 WA 70

Sunday
Fiona- barebow-516
Andy-1137 (with a bad 90 but made up with the rest)
Matthew- 928 (92 points above previous pb)

Match report

Saturday 23-05-2015
As the SEAL outdoor championships were being held on the same day as this competition as well as being in the middle of exams, I was the only member of SUAC present for the double 720 on the Saturday. Fortunately I wasn’t alone all day as members of my home club were shooting as well. Having arrived at the ground in plenty of time, I met up with the others on my target and discovered a small problem. We all had red spin wings; mine being holographic red, a set of small red spins and a set of red and black gas pro’s. The other archer also had a set of red spins in his case, but wisely decided to not shoot them. Nevertheless, this made scoring throughout the day very interesting. Even the judges got confused. We then also discovered that we all shot with red risers with an even split of Hoyts and W&W’s. It really was the red target!!!
With the initial excitement over and fuelled by bacon butties, we got on with the task of shooting pointy sticks in the general direction of the target. The conditions were perfect for shooting in with very little wind and bright sunshine so most got a decent set of scores. Personally, I got 440 in the morning and then 450 in the afternoon and we were done by 4:30pm with the prizes being handed out shortly after. Then it was home to refletch a couple of arrows and prepare for the Fita in the morning.

Sunday 24-05-2015
Sunday’s weather wasn’t as good as Saturday’s as it was more overcast, although it didn’t rain. More of SUAC were present (Andy, Liam and Fiona), having got back from SEAL late and watched Eurovision, Fiona decided that she wanted a MacDonald’s. However, it took ages to get the meal together and it was generally agreed by everyone that it hadn’t been worth all the hassle, especially for having a MacDonald’s 4 days in a row. We did get to the field in plenty of time as it was literally just around the corner. Once there, we found that there were some Reading archers there as well, although 2 of these were wearing blue denim so they had to try and find something to cover them up (I did suggest gaffa tape being a true engineer). The Traitor (Dominic Collis) turned up late as usual and had to lend Reading archers spare trousers (one of which was his girlfriends). Liam found that his ACE’s weren’t completion legal when he went up for inspection and so had to change onto his ACC’s with a bit of retro fitted electrical tape to put his initials on.
Once we started shooting, people generally did alright although Liam managed to get 5 on the paper but only 1 scoring arrow, which we all thought was fairly impressive. At the end of 90m, both me and the Traitor were on the same score but the Traitor quickly over took me at 70m. During lunch, the Traitor picked up 2 burgers (“one for now and one for later”) while Liam found that his burger hadn’t been properly cooked in the centre so left well alone.
At the start of afternoon session at 50m, everyone did badly apart from Andy (annoyingly). Liam found that as he was shooting a different set of arrows, his button wasn’t set up properly and so retired at the end of 50m as it wasn’t going so well. Shooting improved for everyone else once we hit 30m and we all finished on decent scores. Fiona was awarded a badge however we had left before the medals ceremony as none of us thought we were getting medals. Hopefully next year, we will be able to send more people as it is a very local and excellent shoot.

-Matthew Wellmanator