UKIFAC - The UK & Ireland Field Archery Championships 2013

Hi everybody!

The weekend of 3/4^th of August was the UK & Ireland Field Archery Championships, hosted by Forest Spirit Archers in Kirkcaldy, Fife.... the big one!

The WFAA fielded a large team this year, and I was part of the group that travelled up together on the minibus to the event. We all met up early on Friday morning, loaded up and hit the road! It’s a good thing that we left early, the traffic in the midlands was atrocious and it took 11 and half hours to reach the hotel! We got booked in, gear stowed and went out for dinner and a few drinks to wind down after such a long trip.

 

In the morning, we all met up and went to the course in the minibus and met up with the rest of the Welsh team who had travelled down by themselves. Once we had registered and got our welcome packs and scorecards, I went to the practice butts to check everything over. I’m glad I did this as I identified that my shots were all going low, good groups but mostly 4's instead of the spot for any given distance. I ran out of practice time before I could sort it properly and we went into our groups and out onto the course for the first round.

one of the wood carvings out on the course

 

On the first day, I was shooting a Hunter round on the East course. I started off with a 19 but they were all still low, skirting the bottom edge of the spot. In the few targets that followed I shot 2 x 17’s before I identified what had happened. At some point on the journey down, my bag must have been crushed and my arrow rest had been pushed down just slightly. I loosened it and moved it back up a touch, literally less than a mm and locked it back down.

In the 13 targets that followed I only dropped 5 points, scoring 255 out of a possible 260 so that definitely did the trick! I kept this kind of performance up for most of the round, with a few 18’s near the end on the longer shots and those that were exposed to the wind. The wind was quite harsh all weekend but the courses were in dense woodland so only a few targets really felt it.

Really nice shot through the trees - literally!
 

 

In the end, I finished the Hunter round on 536 points – a new pb by 2 points which put me into first place going into day 2! I was absolutely over the moon with this performance, and I feel sure that if my rest had been in the right place at the start, and if I hadn’t deflected a shot off another archer’s arrow into the 4 ring that I might have hit 540!

We all retreated back to the hotel to get cleaned up, changed and we went back out for dinner at the same pub as on Friday night. I had plenty to drink, a fantastic curry and a great evening!

Cyril John, President of the WFAA

I think we'd had a few too many at this stage!

Posing on the Glenrothes monument!

 

We all met up in the morning again, nursing our sore heads from the night before, and got the minibus loaded up with everything for the long drive home after the shoot. We arrived in plenty of time on day 2 and I went back onto the practice butts to verify everything was ok this time around.

We were split into target groups by ranking and I was in the top group, shooting head to head with the other archers contending for the top spots. We had a good day shooting together and the competition was tight. We were at each other’s heels all day and there were only a few points in it towards the end. We were grouping so tightly that on the shared targets we kept shooting nocks and fletches off, and one of the archers in our group was down to his last useable arrows when we finished!

Getting crowded on the 50 yard target

The standard of shooting was very high at this tournament
 

 

We finished the round and the scores went in, and there was a bit of a delay before the award ceremony as the Pro shooters were still on the course. When it was all finished and the results were announced, I was absolutely thrilled to find out that I had finished in second place and had taken the silver medal in AMFU! First place was taken by Daniel Rae who shot extremely well and deserved the win, and third place went to Dennis Groom.

Now for the best part...once the final awards had been given, they announced the results of the Home Nations Challenge. To compete in this, each country must field a team of 2 x Compound, 2 x Recurve, a BowHunter and a Historical archer and I was one of the compound archers selected by out team captain at the start of the event.

 

All the scores are added and the highest cumulative score wins. The results were read out, and Wales took the top spot by a commanding lead! We were all called up and presented with a gold medal and Gary Hart, the team captain called the whole Welsh squad together for a team photo with the trophy.

 

 

This was an incredible achievement, and it is the first time that Wales have brought the Home Nations trophy home since 1992 – the first win in 21 years! Mat Symmonds and Cyril John, VP and President of the WFAA congratulated the whole team on our most successful UKIFAC turnout in memory, with 7 new champions and many more silver and bronze medallists as well as the Home Nations win.

It took about 9 hours to get home because of some bad weather slowing us down on the motorway, and we arrived back in South Wales in the early hours of Monday morning, but spirits were high and we all considered it to be an incredible trip.

All in all, a very successful weekend that will be hard to top!