Senior archers at Onchan Community Centre this week took on the challenge of the 3-spot Fita target. This is the most difficult of the indoor target faces and is the one that is used for National and International events. The round as usual is 60 arrows from a distance of 18m, but using a 3-spot vertical target face which only scores 10 down to 6 (anything outside this being recorded as a miss) and the archer must have one arrow in each of the three spots during each end. The recurve gents class was once again dominated by Tony Hartley who is the most experienced of the archers competing and put in a score of 527. Following him on the leaderboard was Danny Cowin, who by contrast is in his first indoor season and shot this round for the first time putting in an excellent score of 431 and setting himself a PB . Taking third spot this week was Adrian Breed with 360. Following his victory in the Handicap shoot last week, Colin Cain also tried this target for the first time and put in a score of 346 finishing just off the podium but setting a PB for the round. The only lady recurve shooting on Sunday was Karen Lott whose score of 483 was a little short of her personal best, but provided valuable practice for the upcoming Indoor National Competition in December. In the compound class, the victory went to Dave Moore with a high score of 562 putting 6 points onto his pb. There was once again a nail-biting contest between Billy Lightfoot and Peter Mumford for the second and third places, both finishing with the same score of 554, but Billy took the runner-up place by shooting one more gold than Peter and setting himself a new pb in the process. As the George sisters were absent having a well earned rest and Sarah Rigby was not competing this week, the lone lady compound archer was Joy Gough, who, with a score of 547, is returning to her pre-injury form.
The Junior archers are not required to shoot the 3-spot target face, so they shot a Fita 18 this week which is their most difficult round, and all put in new personal best scores. Bradley Layton added a total of 27 onto his best previous score for the round and took first place with a score of 461, followed by Josh Trafford who added a massive 95 points to his pb with a score of 374 and then young Jack Tyrer who added 11 points to his personal best score recording 307 for the round. This confirms that the hard work these young archers are putting in is improving their technique and of course therefore resulting in higher scores.
Next week the competition returns to the Portsmouth round (a change to the published shooting calendar), meeting as usual at Onchan at 10 am for a 10.30 start in the morning and 1.30 for 2 pm start in the afternoon.
Results:
Gents Recurve: Tony Hartley 59/527/18, Danny Cowin 53/431/7 (pb), Adrian Breed 46/360/5, Colin Cain 43/346/6 (pb), Rhys Moore 37/280/2, Bod Boland 34/261/5
Ladies Recurve: Karen Lott 58/483/11
Gents Compound: Dave Moore 60/562/24 (pb), Billy Lightfoot 60/554/18 (pb), Peter Mumford 60/554/17
Ladies Compound: Joy Gough 50/547/17
Junior Gents: Bradley Layton 59/461/7(pb), Josh Trafford 56/374/3(pb), Jack Tyrer 52/307/2 (pb)
