Birmingham Tops at Third BUTTS Leg of the Season!
With the New Year comes more medals for the University of Birmingham Archery Club, as they take home 7 medals in the third BUTTS Leg of the indoor season.
It was an early start for our archers departing from Birmingham at 8am to shoot a Portsmouth round at Warwick University on Saturday the 20th January 2018, but despite their early start, the team brought along their A-game and came away with results to be proud of! Gent Recurve saw Sports Scholar Conor Hall winning his second Gold medal for the league with a score of 588/600. The Leg also saw the team’s male compound archer Sam Rees, take up his recurve bow to win a bronze medal scoring 576! Team captain, Jamal Rahman, finished in 7th place with a score of 562 and teammate Chris Avins finished in 9th place scoring 558.
The Lady Recurve category also had great success as Sports Scholar Eleanor Piper also wins her second Gold medal scoring 582 and teammate Evelina D’Arcy came away with the bronze medal with a score of 546!
With alternative bowstyles becoming increasingly popular in the archery community, our archers had a lot of competition as a total of 15 barebow archers competed, including 12 experienced archers in the category. Despite the league not separating the category into lady/gent and novice/experienced, Birmingham still succeeded: gaining a silver medal from Amelia Elgey scoring 485! Amelia topped the Lady Barebow category as the team’s 4 barebow archers (the Birmingham Barebow Babes) sustained the top 4 places: Pam Quilang came 2nd with a score of 455, Megan Salfairso came 3rd scoring 441 and India Wilson came 4th at 426. The team’s sole compound archer, Alice Cotton, also did well scoring 554.
This leg was the first leg that our baby toucans (the novice recurve team) attended with their new metal bows! Having previously trained and used wooden bows at the last two legs, the novice team have adapted well to their new bows, some having increased their draw poundage from 20lbs to 30lbs in the space of 3 months! The Leg saw Novice Lady Recurve archer Heather Ford attaining her second Gold medal of the league with a score of 498 and Novice Captain Imogen Mellor achieving Silver with a score of 479! Teammate Eleanor Naccarato finished 8th with a score of 312. The ladies also had our sole Novice barebow archer, Anna Barlow, finish in 3rd place with a score of 267!
The Gents also did well with Alistair Stewart achieving a personal best with 515, narrowly missing the bronze by 4 points! Teammate Huw Thomas was a first timer to the league but achieved 5th place with a score of 482, Ed Hulbert came 7th scoring 454 and Saivan Khonji-Sajjadi came 14th with a score of 337.
The Team Scores (consisting of the University Teams’ top 4 scores) saw Birmingham coming 1st with a score of 2308 ahead of Warwick’s 2287! The Novices narrowly missed out on 1st place with a score of 1974, only 3 points behind of Warwick’s 1977!
With the next BUTTS leg being held in our very own Slater Hall, keep an eye out for our next match report to see how the toucans do on home turf!