Archery Nationals

Had our first experience of competition archery yesterday. The concept is pretty simple and quite like you would imagine. It really is just variations on shooting an arrow at a target and scoring depending how close you get to the bulls-eye. There are different competitions but all follow this basic concept.

 

 

 

We watched a competition style called clout. In this particular competition the archers stand a long way (80-140m, depending on the experience of the competitor) from a peg in the ground. On either side of the peg are flags which serve to denote the edges of the rings you would be familiar with on a standard target.

  Because of the distance to the target, the archers must shoot skywards to make the distance. In addition, during the competition, the archers can see whether they have shot to the left or right of the target, but they can’t really see whether they are long or short until after they have shot their set of arrows, in this case 6. So the competition proceeds in 6 rounds, where each archer has 4 minutes to shoot six arrows, before that round is scored. During scoring, each archer can see where their arrows landed and so could make adjustments to their aim for the next round.

This competition is the junior archery national championship, and competitors qualify by shooting above a minimum score in a lead-up club-based competition. Our interest comes through our nephew. Last year, as a “cub” he was successful in winning a national title in Victoria. This year he has gone up a division, to “intermediate” and so the competition is therefore that little bit more experienced.

During the clout competition on the day, our nephew came second in his division, intermediate recurve (the style of bow), and so received a silver medal.

Earlier in the week were target (basically what you all expect of archery) and matchplay competitions. Matchplay is similar to target but pits pairs of archers together, handicapped according to their experience, and eliminates one of the pair in each round, similar to a tennis tournament. Matchplay allows all of the archers in the competition to play regardless of their division, as the handicapping acts as a leveller.

In both the target and matchplay, our nephew came fourth, losing the bronze-medal playoff in the matchplay.

Today is the field competition. This has archers following a course shooting at targets along the way. Depending on the varying terrain along the way the shooting conditions differ and could be up or down, long or short or involve other difficulties. You can’t have spectators in this because of the danger I expect, so he needs to compete without our help, as if he needs it!