The Final Arrow
On 11th February, the University of St Andrews Archery Club hosted and participated in the fifth and final league match as part of the Scottish Student Sport (SSS) Archery Indoor League.
There were 36 total competitors from 5 different clubs, and their team consisted of 10 archers across various categories:
- Jonah McArthur, Kelsey Hunt and Tom Gymer in the Experienced Recurve;
- Icare Joyard and Sharon Pisani in the Experienced Barebow; Josephine Stewart in the Experienced Compound;
- Ryan Tung, Annette Song and Jia Yi Lau Tang in the Novice Recurve and
- Daniil Guryev in the Novice Barebow category.
The categories vary depending on the bow style – Compound, Recurve, or Barebow – and experience level – novices are archers who started archery this academic year, whereas experienced archers have shot for longer.
This league match was Annette and Jia Yi’s first time attending a competition!
From the previous four league matches, the experienced non-compound team is sitting in third place, and the novice non-compound team was holding fourth place. The club is hoping to have done enough to medal in each of these categories overall, but will have to wait until the awards ceremony in a few weeks’ time to find out the final results.
Many individual archers are also in the running for medals in their respective categories: Icarus only started archery last year but is in the running for a medal in the experienced barebow category. Ryan is currently first in the novice recurve category, having started the sport in September, so all eyes are on him to hopefully be able to take home a well-deserved gold medal for the league.
UStA Archery’s captain Josephine has been unable to attend some of the league matches due to competitions further afield – last month she travelled to Pennsylvania to compete at the Lancaster Archery Classic, where she ranked 17th out of 84 archers in her category. She is hoping to secure a medal at the Scottish Student Archery Indoor Championships in early March.
Overall, the match was a great success, with some archers setting new personal best scores, and everyone having a great time in the competitive atmosphere. Congratulations to the entire team and we are excited to see how the team gets placed when results are released!