Marc - National Indoor under-14 Champion!

Massive congratulations and respect to Marc Charlesworth who was clear winner in the under-14 Gents Recurve division at the National Indoor Junior Championships in Coventry. Not fazed by the 350 entrants, Marc increased his lead and won with a Personal Best of 561 - that's the time and place to do it!

Portsmouth Tournament Pictures

Click on any picture to see Larger

Winter Postal dates

The BA Postal details have arrived!!!! So I can now announce the dates of the shoots over the next 5 months. Apologies for the delay in setting these up, if anyone can't do any of the dates below, let me know. I will be passing around printed copies of the dates on Friday evening...

24th November 2013
15th December 2013
19th January 2014
16th February 2014
16th March 2014

For anyone who hasn't shot the postal league before - it is a Portsmouth round - 5 dozen at 18m. We have two teams entered, so need 6 scores, but the more people shoot the better. And if we get a lot of participants we'll enter more teams next year.

I look forward to seeing you at the first shoot on Sunday!

Out at last

Last day of their course, and the November beginners class finally got decent enough weather to get outdoors, there was a wonderful blue sky to match their blue extremities in the very chilly air. A Clout Flag was set up over 70 yards away, and everybody managed to reach it, even the youngest - very impressive with that 12-pound bow.
Just as impressive was everybody's side-to-side aiming and shooting skill, which was brilliant from the start, but of course it took a few ends for everyone to master the distance. After about twenty minutes it was time to go back inside to shoot the final (scored) mini-Round. Although it wasn't as tight as it was at the end of the June course when there had to be a shoot-off, or August when both Ladies and Gents tied, there was only one point separating the ALL the gents shooting recurve, that's one clear winner and three second places, and the gent shooting longbow was only twelve points behind with 73 out of a possible 100. The Ladies were also tightly clustered, and the Juniors were in among them or close behind.
This was the final beginners course of this year, over sixty have been taken through, and the standard of talent has been awesome.

(click on a picture to open up a gallery of larger versions)

Summer Postal League - RESULTS!

The results are in, and after being promoted in most of our divisions this year, we have unfortunately fallen short in all teams. But it was still a very good competition and thank you to everyone who participated this year! Looking forward to seeing you all shooting for the indoor postal league, which will be starting in November!!

Results are as follows:

Arundown Recurve A team - 3rd place - just behind Bowmen of Lyme A by 34 points

Arundown Recurve B team - 5th place - a tricky division, but the winners were actually trailing the second place team by almost 400 points! Just goes to show that it's the wins that count and not the total score!

Arundown Longbow A team - 2nd place -  3 out of 5 wins isn't enough for the Longbow division, 7 out of 11 of the winning teams won all their matches!!

Arundown Longbow B team - 3rd place - the same amount of wins as our A team, so a great performance.

If anyone would like to see the full results, I shall put a copy in the main hut.

Keep an eye on the blog for the dates for the indoor shoots. :)

Wand Magic

Following the first double-session weekend, when it seemed everyone was grouping all their arrows in the gold (one picture at the end of this post, more to follow soon), the beginners group headed outside this afternoon and tried shooting at a 'wand' placed 50 yards way - three times further than than the furthest they'd shot so far.

 The Wand is the white upright line just to the left of the cellphone transmitter mast

 

It took a few attempts to work out what to do, but on about the fourth end Chris got a hit - but it bounced out. But it wasn't long before he did it again.

And another three ends and both Lindsey and Rory did it too

The Wand is tricky and cruel, sometimes it looks as if the arrow must have passed right through, it can be right behind, and still missed. The ground around the wand was thick with arrows. Then Dan got TWO hits in the same end

 You'll see  there's an arrow near his foot, touching the wand but still not scoring. It was one of Annie's, and she missed by a hairsbreadth...

Then on the next end, Dan did it again....

 And he hadn't finished because the did the same on following end

In the first two sessions it wasn't long before the gold was taking a real hammering, starting with Keith and soon followed by Lindsey and Fergus

If you click on any of the images, they should open up fullsize in a gallery

Loads of Records - and Trophies

Continuing the Barebow theme...
Doug won the Gents Barebow segment of  the Eastbourne Rose Tournament with a huge personal best score, which was also his third qualifying Master Bowman score, so he'll be at the UK Masters next Summer. Clearly a club record, and well on the way to the County Record.
Michaela travelled up to Oxford and broke the county Ladies Barebow record for the Ladies FITA round, and also two of the Distances too.
Liz shot her first Barebow Clout at Southampton, and boosted the Sussex Ladies Records for the single and double AND won a Purple Tassel Award with a score of 176 - that's the highest grade of Tassel.
A pretty successful weekend - well done!
Postscript - 2 weekends later...
 At Warlingham the nasty following wind knocked plenty of points off, but everyone took a medal home...
Graham Skinner was 2nd Surrey County Longbow;
Graham Brown was top barebow Gent, both all-comers and visitors, with what was a singular score under the weather conditions (G.Skinner's score was also singular); Jon Stafford was 2nd Visitir and Rod Brown 3rd;
Liz Bowyer easily won the Ladies Barebow and came close to a purple-award score with 170, beating two of the top lady recurve clout shooters, and second only to the 2011 National recurve Champion.

B.B. bothered

We have seen the future, and it's looking pretty Bare.
Time to  throw away those sights, clickers and stabilisers, and go for the 180 point bonuses instead.
Which is another way of saying we lost our Albion to Eastbourne by a margin of 69 points, against a team made up of four Barebow archers who between them picked up 720 bonus points.
But never mind, it was a lovely day and good company even if the wind knocked us all ragged. The day was marked by a great performance by Martin who was way out in front until he faded a little in the last couple of dozen, and was passed by Jon who at the same moment pulled it all together (and found time to take these pictures). Liz was steady all day and got within a dozen points of a PB, if the wind hadn't been so punishing she'd have soared into the middle or high 700s. The fourth member of the Team, Graham, had a disappointing 80 yards, followed by a storming 60 - goodness knows what was in his sandwich box.
We also had two competitors in the Junior and Longbow 'Postal' sections of the league. Becky shot a Short Windsor, the first time she'd taken on the 50 yard distance which she'll move up to after her birthday, and once again she improved her standard, that's three times in a row. And Andy, shooting 80 yards for the first time, and only his second round ever, scored 243 which is is actually the second highest Gents Longbow Albion we have on record!
Jon 733 - Martin 715 - Liz 675 - Graham 664
Becky 498 - Andy 243
As usual, the pictures should enlarge if you click on them