Once again work commitments and another dose of flu has put me behind with members progress and what progress some of the aoR members have made over the last couple of weeks.
Sunday 9th March 2014 was an amazing weekend for AoR, both Juniors and Seniors. Several archers entered into the NCAS Indoor Championships at Targetcraft and the club came away with some great results to note:
Kevin Wood scored a brilliant 388 for the Portsmouth shooting his American Flatbow. In doing so, he set himself a new Personal Best, also a new club record and he took silver for the class in the tournament.
Martin Davis continues to go from strength to strength with his Barebow. He has already had a lot of success this year after stripping back his bow, but he has closed out the indoor season with a high honour. Shooting a 468 for the first round in the double and a great 499 in the second, he took gold medal and was crown NCAS Indoor Barebow County Champion for 2014.
Eddie Clarke (496) and Deanna Neville (496) completed the seniors who took part in the tournament.
The Juniors were well represented with a large number of the club juniors entering for the tournament and as usual they did not disappoint. The awards for the juniors were made as a bulk junior award, rather than by age. This made for a very exciting shoot and final results sheet. Whilst Lizzie Warner from Kiby Muxloe AC (Age 14) took the number one slot, the next six places were filled by AoR archers.
Amazingly, all of the AoR girls blitzed the magic 500 with Imogen Neville posting a fine 521 for her first round and an even better 528 for the second, showing great consistency and improvement. Ruby Paul narrowly missed out on a medal with a fine 535 and a new personal best and yet another new club record set. I knew that she would break the 500 soon, but this score really smashed through the barrier. For those who don’t know Ruby, aged just 12, she has only been shooting for a short time and this was achieved with no clicker on her bow.
In the same aged group, both Amber Wilkins (aged 16) and Katie Bayliss (aged 17) would be fighting it out for the County Championship. Both would enter for a double so only the first two scoring rounds would count. Interestingly, both girls shot a lower score in their seconds rounds than in their first, with Amber scoring a 538 and Katie slightly higher with a 541. However, the first and all important scoring rounds would see the fortunes reversed, with Katie shooting a fine 542, but Amber taking the honour of NCAS Indoor County Champion for 2014 with a brilliant 545.
Daniel Nixon is a long standing friend of AoR’s juniors and it was great to see him crowned NCAS County Champion for the Gents Junior Recurve for this year – well done Daniel from all your friends at AoR. However, Ryan Abott has been working hard over the winter and it is good to see him stretching his wings again and getting out into the archery community and tackling some more tournaments. At the County Champs he shot a fine 363 to take 5th place overall and I just know that he’ll continue to climb the leader board if he keeps working as hard as he is right now.
16th March 2014 and time to catch my breath, well not really. Shooting a registered Portsmouth round Deanna Neville was not to be outdone by her girls success from the week before and she posted a wonder new personal best with a 514 and Simon Wright continued his personal success story during the indoor season with a brilliant 578 and a new personal best.