On The Wings Of Victory

Hail and well met archery fans, its been an interesting few weeks, and if it all goes well I should have a treat for you all. Yes that's right I have finally managed to take some pictures. Took me long enough I know., problem is though I haven't been on here for 2-3 weeks so I might just spam photos.

Firstly the bad news, seemingly accord to the scores I've been putting in, my averages or at least in the Portsmouth has been going down, which was a rather large concern with the Chester County Shoot coming up and which is a Portsmouth.

But first was the club's annual dinner and award ceremony, which luckily for me was at Altrincham town hall. It was a pleasant evening nice food and ceremony, and to top it off a nice and unexpected pub quiz.

Angus cutting the clubs 61st anniversary cake. 

The award ceremony also brought my first (and hopefully not last) trophy and medal, or at least medal that I get to keep. It was for getting the best handicap score at the club handicap shoot in September. The trophy I get to hold for a year (or until I move which may happen due to out of club circumstances, personally I'd like to stay but we'll see).

  As February came, in preparations I've only really been shooting on a Portsmouth face and seemingly from the score I've put in, I got worse. But with the knowledge I can do better the Chester shoot came round and we set off.

The shoot was going well, the final 3 bosses were mostly longbow archers with the odd sprinkling of recurve and in my case compound archers. Not the best combination I might say. All in all I was not at my best performance at the shoot, and the mid break did seem to put me off. As it took me a while to get back to form, e.g last half dozen before the break 46, first half dozen after then break 25.........not good, but despite not shooting my best, I was keeping an Alsager longbow archer on his toes (which was good seeing as he had been shooting for 20 years) and I was beating a New Century longbow archer. Even despite my arrows staying away from the 10s and only on occasionally hitting 9s. I don't think they wanted to go near the compound archer's arrows/area.

At the end of the competition we were waiting for the results at the awards, congratulating other's shooting till at last the longbow scores were called. After 4 dozen we were 15pts down to Alsager, not bad seeing as they were the clubs main rivals so were were expecting to be in a close but solid second. But to the shock of at least 3 of our 4 longbow shooters NCB was called to be the winners. It had turned out that in the last dozen NCB longbows had made up 25 points and overtaken Alsager. I didn't get a real look at the results of the other teams, but congratulations to Shaun, and Elise for placing in the top 3, I was 8th out of 15 in the longbows which isn't bad seeing as this was my first competitive shoot outside of the club, and I've only been shooting for just over a year. Also congratulations to the other longbowers of the team Shaun, Elise & Steve. Also well done to all NCB archers and all other archers who took part, pleasure shooting with you all. Big thanks to all the judges, and personal thank you to Angus for taking me there and back and for supporting the team.

My medals........btw yes I know its a recurve bow on the longbow winners medal, but its a standard medal or so I'm told so its ok.

That's all for now, stay tuned for more soon.