Today was Archers of Raunds annual open outdoor tournament and the rounds being shot were the Albion and Windsor rounds. This is a nice mix of rounds where the seniors can stretch themselves with the Albion (80, 60 and 50 yards) and the Windsor rounds provide a selection of distances to cover all age groups. Today, we’d have archers right across the range and shooting Recurve, Compound, Barebow, Longbow and Flatbow.
For those of you that do not wish to read on, the results form the tournament can be found the AoR Results page.
The weather was fine from the off with the sun shining throughout and a medium breeze across the field from right to left. This was Richards first open tournament as Tournaments Officer and, as usual, AoR put on a fine tournament and everything went without a hitch. Leza ran her tuck shop and I for one was pleased of the cooled cans as the day got warmer.
Heather, our judge for the day, kicked off the event with the usual assembly and then we had a reasonably easy ride. It was great to see how diligent Heather was on the line, picking up someone wearing jeans and another wanting to shoot with open toed shoes. Something that we’ll work on reminding people about going forward – yes everyone gets told during the beginners course, but too often people don’t listen until they get hurt.
The conditions were really good for personal best scores to be set, but I did not hear about any being achieved with exception of a couple of the juniors. It would be great to hear from any of the seniors who achieved new heights on the day.
Some of the successes that I did hear about included Jack Denny who shot a brilliant 714 for the Junior Windsor to take gold and the highest scoring junior boy in his very first tournament. Jack only returned to archery a few months ago and serious shooting and this is a brilliant achievement for lots of reasons. Brother Brad will need to be careful <g>.
Another high flyer was Ruby Paul. Ruby is just flying at the moment, setting new club records just about every time she shoots and I believe that her brilliant 918 for the Short Junior Windsor (under 14) enabled her to claim gold, the trophy for the highest scoring junior lady and an unconfirmed NCAS county record. Not bad for a junior in her first year of shooting.
Imogen Case shot a really nice 560 for the Short Junior Windsor and took gold for the Under 12 and set a personal best. Considering 30 yards is her limit this was a brilliant result with 98 hits and 19 golds on the day.
Ryan, Amber and Imogen rounded off the juniors for this shoot. Ryan shot a fine 641 for the U14 Junior Windsor to take silver, Amber posted a great 858 for the U18 Short Windsor and Imogen posted a nice 852 for the Junior Windsor, both girls taking gold in their classes.
All in all I think that everyone had a good shoot and it was great to see an number of visitors over from Banbury Cross, Northampton AC and Duston Bowmen and WOAC. It was also great to see some new faces and to host some archers shooting in their first away tournament.
As usual, I was there with my camera set to quiet mode and trying not to interfere with the archers whilst also trying to get some decent shots of the event. Those images are now available to view on my M4Photo website and I have a special .jpg price for those people wishing to purchase digit files to print at home. As always, a decent percentage will be given to the club.
If you are interested in me covering your next tournament and making some additional funds for your club, please contact me on m4photo@outlook.com.