Club interest was centred on the National Indoor Championships at the weekend with a small group travelling to Coventry’s Ricoh Stadium for the event. The Championships take place over two days, the Junior Championships and a Back to Back event being held on the Saturday and the Senior Championships taking place on Sunday.

The Senior event consists of a qualifying round (60 arrows at a range of 18m on a triple face target) which sees the top 32 scores from each discipline go into a knockout head to head round.

Karen Lott, shooting in the Ladies Recurve division,put in a personal best score of 60/542/21 to qualify in thirteenth place. Lott won her first ever head to head contest to progress to the second round but there she came up against the hugely talented Vlada Priestman who brought her run to an end. Vlada went on to take the Bronze medal.

In the Ladies Compound division both Sarah Rigby and Aalin George qualified for the knockout stage. Sarah’s score of 60/570/30 put her through in =2nd place but Aalin’s score of 60/549/14 was only good enough for 29th. Unfortunately this put Aalin up against Sarah in the first of the knockout rounds so the Isle of Man lost an archer immediately. Aalin, somewhat off form, lost the head to head and had to be content with the 6th place she had achieved in the previous day’s Back to Back tournament. Sarah on the other hand progressed through to the ? finals where she had a tense showdown with Pauline Burfitt which ended in a tied score. Rigby held her nerve and won the one arrow shoot off to reach the semi-finals. Sadly Sarah lost her match to the eventual Gold Medal winner Naomi Jones and had to shoot for the Bronze Medal against Stephanie Clason. It was a very close match with Rigby losing by a single point and having to settle for fourth.

Of the other Manx archers, Joy Gough had a miss early on and her score of 59/533/13 was not good enough for qualification and she finished in 47th place. Pete Mumford put in a decent score of 60/552/16 but such was the strength of the field that this was only good enough for 74th place. Dave Moore had a very disappointing round shooting well below his capability. His score of 60/541/11 saw him finish in 95th place.

Saturday’s Junior event consisted of a single round with the highest score taking the win. Kirsten George went into the tournament ranked #1 in GB, this added a huge amount of pressure which combined with a lack of practice saw Kirsten record the relatively low score of 60/557/19 to finish in 5th place overall.

Just to remind all Club Members that Sunday afternoon will be the Christmas Fun shoot so come and pit yourselves against a range of novelty targets.