First Sunday in Weeks

Today was the first Sunday in weeks that I had been able to get to the club and it was great to see so many people on the shooting line again.  The shoot was to be a Portsmouth and with Lauren along for enjoyment, rather than a scoring round, I ‘thought’ that I might get to take a few pictures of people shooting.  The day turned out to be just a little different.

Midway through the shoot, one of the young archers hit a difficulty and frustration kicked in big time.  With Geoff’s help (wearing his now infamous ‘Archery Doctor’ shirt) we managed to help and over the mid-shoot break we had the archer back in the zone and shooting well again.  As a coach, there is nothing more rewarding than taking on someone with an issue and helping to put them back into a good place, and it really set me up for the week ahead.

Whilst this was going on, Leza took great delight in presenting Brad Denny with a congratulations card for his wonderful achievement at the 2014 European Archery Festival in Telford.  Shooting in the Junior Gents Recurve category, Brad shot brilliantly to secure third place and a well deserved bronze medal.  Clearly all the training that he is doing around the world, mixed with his sheer hard work is paying dividends.

However, Bradley’s day was not to end there – His shoot was damn fine as well.  When you open a Portsmouth with a first half dozen consisting X, X, X, X, X, 10 you know that it is going to be a good day.  I won’t go through his score sheet as it is demoralising reading for the rest of us (I jest) but he shot three perfect 60’s, six 59’s and, I don’t know where this one came from, but one single low end which was a 57, with three nines – if you can call that a low scoring end.  Not one arrow was out of the gold area and the score sheet consists of 27 X’s.

So that’ll be another AoR club record for Brad and a potential NCAS county record.  I guess I’ll need to get the shoots results online PDQ.

There were plenty of other personal achievements along the shooting line and hopefully those archers will drop me a line sometime.

The younger archers are always keen to share their successes with me and today’s successes include:

Young Louis (Gents U16) has been working hard and he finished on a 57 half dozen made up of 9,9,9 and then an great X, X, 10 to finish.  In fact, looking at his score sheet he improved throughout the morning with a 90, 96, 96, 104 and a 106.

Ryan (Gents U12) has been putting some extra coaching to good use and it was great to see him relaxed, smiling and enjoying his archery again.  With a mixed round, his efforts included a smashing 51 and 53, both back-to-back half dozens and just goes to show what he is capable of.

Aleyna (Ladies U10) is another young archer that has been listening to her coaches and working hard.  With a nice solid style throughout the morning, punctuated by the odd cake and sweet :), Aleyna went on to shoot another personal best with a fine 287 and cracking the 300 will not be long now.  She really is getting the best out of her small junior bow.  Like Louis, her scores pretty much improved throughout the morning.  Posting a 28, 29, 33, 27 and 35, she only had one dozen that dropped back.  A great effort and a great end result.

Well done to everyone that shot today and achieved a personal success, wherever you were.