Wins at Presidents & Pairs
A nine strong delegation of St. Neots Bowmen participated in the Presidents & Pairs tournament on Sunday June 25th. The event took place at the field of Dunstable Bowmen, and after some initial consternation the competition got underway. There was a lot of interest, so we were shooting 6 archers to a boss. Just the odd drop of rain before we got started. The wind kept all archers from putting in record-breaking scores.
The Presidents & Pairs tournament is not decided on individual scores, but on team or pair scores. There was no separate barebow category but as the results were handicap-adjusted this was not a problem. Our recurve team of Mary Louca, Sunil Kalra, Abs Sohrabi, Andrew Blake and Russell Smith won both the league team trophy and the President’s team trophy, while Stacey Taylor and Marc Bax won the compound pair award.
Have-a-go at village fete
St. Neots Bowmen offered visitors to the Village Fete in Offord Darcy on Saturday June 17th the opportunity to discover their inner Robin Hood. We held three short (30 minute) taster sessions, which were taken up by over 30 aspiring archers.
Our normal Have-a-Go sessions are two hours long. The next one will be held on Saturday July 22nd 11am-1pm, and the last one of this outdoor season will be on Saturday August 19th, again 11am-1pm. See the “try archery” page for more details on these sessions and our beginners’ course starting in September.
Two golds for St. Neots Bowmen
Yesterday club members Mary Louca, Sunil Kalra, and Nel and Marc Bax participated in the SCAS/BCAA clout archery championships. Though the range in Offord is too small to do any clout practice we did manage to produce two county champions: Mary Louca won the ladies barebow gold, and Marc Bax left his compound at home to win gents barebow gold. More importantly, a pleasant day engaged in a somewhat different form of archery was had by us all. We hope more members will join us on other clout shoots in the area!
What is clout archery?
In clout archery the target is a flag in the ground. The goal is to get your arrows to land close to the flag, in a scoring zone 24 feet (7.3m) across. If you land within a foot of the flag you score “a clout” – the maximum score of 5 points. The further away, the lower your score. It is a fact of life that for many archers the majority of their arrows will be misses.
One small point: The distance to the flag is much greater than your normal target distance. Ladies shoot at 140 yards, gentlemen at 180 yards. You don’t need a very powerful bow to reach such a distance, 30lb and carbon arrows will easily get to 180 yards. You’ll be aiming at the sky, hence why most archers shoot barebow or longbow.
Sussex archery has produced an excellent Cloud Archery Basics document for download.
April 30th: Club head-to-head tournament
On Sunday April 30th we will be shooting our first outdoor club tournament of 2017: a head-to-head shot over 50m, at a full-size 122cm target. Note you can participate shooting recurve, barebow or longbow (but not compound): all bow styles will compete in a single competition as per World Archery standards. read more…
3rd place for Double Dutch
Last Sunday (March 5th) Nel and I (team “Double Dutch” for the occasion) participated in the Beiter Hit-or-Miss express tournament organised by Hingham Bowmen (Hingham lies about 15 miles west of Norwich). As a warm-up we first both shot a Worcester round (241 resp. 299, so we won’t talk about that), but the real reason for coming started afterwards. read more…
Outdoor “252” award scheme
For the 2017 outdoor season we are introducing the “252” scheme which has been adopted by many other clubs. Some clubs use the 252 scheme to keep archers from shooting long distances until they’ve reached a good score on the shorter distances. We won’t—you can shoot any distance you like.
2017 summer season external shoots
As I’d like to see many club members participating in external events, I’ve made the overview below for your convenience. You can find more tournaments either on the Archery GB calendar (only shows UK/World record status events), or better on the diary published by Brighton Bowmen. There is a choice of events every weekend!
Christmas shoot Sunday December 18th
While we have more “serious” club tournaments over the other months, our December contest this month has a theme and team spirit. On Sunday the 18th you’ll paired up with a buddy, will be shooting at a collection of baubles, and will be doing the shuffle. Hot dogs, mince pies and such will be available.
Please be at building 3034 by 10:10am on the day so we can team you up using our elaborate algorithm…
A new website
Some of you might have noticed we’ve had a fair amount of trouble with our website over the past year, leading to its complete disappearance last week. We’re making a fresh start, including a new (and more appropriate) domain name: St. Neots Bowmen can now be found at www.stneotsbowmen.club
Please bear with us while we gradually add content and functionality to the new site. The new email aliases for the committee members and for the committee as a whole now work, but there’s still a bit of work to be done before we can send out emails to all members at once.
If there is content or functionality you feel would be useful for the site, please let me know.