There was Isle of Man interest at the Junior National Outdoor Championships at Lilleshall at the weekend. The meeting was held over two days with a Fita Star round on the Saturday shot over metric distances and a National round shot over yards on the Sunday. Charlotte Harris was competing at the championships for the second year running, while Josh Trafford and Bradley Layton were making their debut.

 Saturday’s shoot saw the Islands’ representatives competing in the Metric II category: three dozen arrows at each of four distances: 60, 50, 40 and 30m. The day before the shoot was marked by torrential rain and the forecast was for further showers over the weekend. Saturday started gloomily enough but the skies soon cleared and hats and sunscreen became the order of the day as the temperatures soared. The Juniors acquitted themselves well. Charlotte recorded a Junior Master Bowman score which saw her finish in 8th place. Bradley added 54 points to his personal best score to finish 14th and Josh added a terrific 125 points to his pb to finish 15th.

Sunday saw the IoM Juniors competing in the Bristol II round: six dozen arrows at 60 yards, four dozen at 50 yards and two dozen at 40 yards. The weather was much the same as Saturday except for a very brief and light shower of rain. Most of the archers did not bother with waterproofs and many found the rain rather soothing on the sunburn they had picked up the day before. Harris was disappointed with the last couple of ends she shot but again recorded a Junior Master Bowman score which put her in 9th place. Josh Trafford was suffering from stiff shoulders being unaccustomed to shooting two days in a row. He had a slow start but stuck to it to finish 19th. Bradley Layton improved on his previous best score for the round by 31 points to finish 14th again.

Scores JNOC: Metric II - Junior Gents Recurve – Bradley Layton 1054  0  0pb, Josh Trafford 957  0  0pb. Junior Ladies Recurve Charlotte Harris 1040  16  5. Bristol II - Junior Gents Recurve Bradley Layton 141 987 46pb, Josh Trafford 143 925 40. Junior Ladies Recurve Charlotte Harris 142 1012 47.

At Greeba the rest of the club’s archers shot only in the morning. The weather was great but the wind got up a few times when least expected. The round of the day was a 70/50m. The Compound archers shot 72 arrows at 50m and the Recurve archers shot the same number of arrows at 70m. In the Compound division Billy Lightfoot and Pete Mumford engaged in a neck and neck battle which saw Lightfoot overturn a 5 point deficit going to the final dozen to win by 1 point. Colin Moore also shot the round but was bedding in a new string which caused him to have a couple of misses. Thomas Bott, Danny Cowin and Tony Hartley shot in the Recurve division, they all recorded misses but Thomas came out on top.

The junior Recurve archers shot Metric rounds according to their age groups.

Results: Gents Compound – 1. Billy Lightfoot 72 620 16 3, 2. Pete Mumford 72 619 12 4, 3. Colin Moore 70 600 16 2. Ladies Compound – Joy Gough 72 602 13 6. Gents Recurve – 1. Thomas Bott 70 433 2 0, 2. Danny Cowin 65 404 2 1pb, 3. Tony Hartley 68 369 1 0.

Junior Gents Recurve: Short Metric III- 1. Jack Tyrer 69 455 4 0, 2. Joseph Reaney 61 369 1 0. Short Metric IV James Hill 70 523 9 6.