Incredible performances from Lucy Mason and James Howse at the National Series, some great performances at the biggest ever British Junior Championships, an absolutely brilliant day when a team of National Grid Engineers volunteered at our ground with a day’s hard work to support the development of the club, an excellent Club Target day, huge attendance at our weekly Open Community Session, another Compound Round Robin Head to Head workshop, multiple group and private beginners and improvers courses, a corporate event and well attended practice sessions, not bad in just a week!
National Series Stage 3 in Surrey.
Our archers surpassed even our wildest expectations when Lucy Mason won the Ladies Compound and James Howse secured Bronze to cap an amazing day.
Lucy Mason Winner of the Stage 3 National Series Event
Lucy finished 5th, James 4th and Tom 35th in qualification, which then saw Lucy win all her 6 elimination rounds to take Gold and James win his matches until he met Adam Ravenscroft, the eventual Gold Medal winner in the semifinal, however James won the Bronze Medal match!
James Howse – Won Bronze at the Stage 3 National Series – losing to the eventual winner.
Their achievement as juniors shooting in a senior competition must not be underestimated, it is well deserved and they train and practice so hard.
They have been qualifying in good positions on a regular basis, so this is no surprise, as a club we started a fortnightly head to head session and we would like to think that if only in a small way, that this contributed to their success!
British Junior Championships
Apologies to all those that shot so well, this should have been reported earlier. All our juniors that attended shot to their standard or above, so well done. The Saturday Metrics saw wins for Lucy Mason, Ella Gibson (who also set a new National Distance Record), Holly Clifford won silver as did Imogen Colenutt.
Ella Gibson – National Record and British Champion!
The Sunday saw an almost identical outcome but on this occasion Lucy had to settle for silver, Ella again winning gold, Holly and Imogen silver. There were some excellent individual performances of relatively inexperienced archers that finished just outside the medal positions, but important experienced gained.
National Series Stage 4
A different format to stage 3 but all the top archers were there, well done to Tom Howse in the Gents Recurve finishing 10th but also congratulations to 2 other Gloucestershire Archers, Ashe Morgan (Cheltenham) winning and Kieran Slater (Minchinhapton) finishing 3rd.
Tom Howse may be getting back to his best or even better!
Both James and Lucy again had good days, with Lucy finishing 4th and James 6th, great performances guys!
National Grid Support Day
We owe a huge debt of gratitude to National Grid who so generously donated a team of volunteers to help us with a number of projects we are currently undertaking, a lot of paperwork in preparation including detailed risk assessments, a team of Deer Park volunteers, some who took holidays to support the event and true to our ethos, we wanted to give something back, so an archery competition and a lovely cream tea was the least we could do!
Group Photo of some of the National Grid Team.
We were so impressed with how hard everyone worked, great team, massive achievements, thank you so much National Grid.
We have tried to capture the flavor of the day so please click here to see some of the action.
Target Day – Albions & Windsors
The longbows contested the Albion round, certainly a great deal of fun but the performances were a little patchy to be kind.
Great time had by all.
Dave Ponton took the honours with 421, John Craigie fresh from 3 York victories in formal competition was second and Roger Crang was a close third but did record the most hits. Probably the best performance of the day was recorded by Junior Longbow archer Ted Williams who recorded 413. Rosemarie McKay recorded a very respectable 571 score of on a Windsor.
Lots of experience taking part but not much evidence!
