The Northern Counties Archery Championships were held at Wakefield, Yorkshire on Sunday 15th November and eleven members of the Isle of Man Archery Club competed in the various age groups and disciplines at the event.  

It was quite a sight to see so many purple and gold club shirts on the shooting line.  There were some nail-biting moments in both the compound and the recurve divisions.  Junior archer, Josh Trafford was competing in the Under 18 Gents Recurve section and was defending the championship he won last year.  This was a very close competition with Josh running three points behind at the end of the first dozen arrows.  He pulled back to one point and then was on equal score at the end of both the third and fourth dozens.  He held his nerve and shot extremely well right to the last arrow and this resulted in him finishing six points ahead of his rival giving him first place in the Under 18 competition but more importantly he finished with the highest Junior Gent score on the day and this meant that he retained his Championship trophy for a second year.  The compound gents’ competition was also very exciting with three IOM archers on the top of the leader board at the end of the third dozen.  However it was Rhys Moore who came out on top at the end of the 60 arrows with a score just below the PB he set last week.  He then had to wait until the end of the second session in the afternoon to find out whether this was enough to give him the win.  Unfortunately an archer from Yorkshire shot a score four points higher than Rhys so he had to settle for second place.  His father, Dave Moore finished in fourth, Peter Mumford sixth, Billy Lightfoot eighth and Ethan Moore eleventh.  The four highest combined compound scores were taken for the team competition and resulted in the IOM compound team being the Champions for 2015.  In the Ladies Compound section,  Joy Gough also had a tight competition with one of the Yorkshire compound lady archers, and despite having a score well below her PB she managed to hold on to first place by one point and therefore took the Ladies Compound Championship.  Other archers competing were Danny Cowin and Dave Berry in the Recurve Gents (26th and 34th respectively) and Junior recurve archers Joseph Reaney and Toby Young taking part in their first NCAS championship.  Toby finished in second place in the Under 14s and Joseph finished in fourth place in the U16s – great results for their first County competition.