Welcome to the first SWWU write-up of the season and we’ll be covering the first couple legs of the year! Read to the end for an update on standings and info on the new Mascot Stealing League! FYI if anyone wants me to use a different name or has any requests just pop a message or email to the swwu socials 🙂
Leg 1 – Virtual
Well done to everyone who sent in their scores and we’ve had some great results so let’s get into it!
Starting the Recurve men, Alex Williams secured first with a whopping 572 (he really is the best huh) and followed close behind by Luke Burch and Austin Zhan. Aberystwyth took the top two spots for the ladies with Cherry Lyne blowing the competition away and leaving silver and bronze for Lauren Harrage and Nishtha Gujadhur.
The mens compound gold was won by Plymouths Corey Richardson with Daniel Hickman and James Thomas joining him on the podium. For the ladies it was a duel between Amy Victoria Bode and Caitlin Willoughby with Amy taking gold for Bristol!
When it comes to the barebow men we had an absolute sweep by Aberystwyth taking all 3 top spots! Congrats to Harold Woodley-Foat, Jack Langston and Parker Dowell for the feat! Marilyn Wong returned to once again dominate the ladies (someone needs to stop her). Following her was Sian Hughes and Ekaterina Raskhodchikova
Finally in the stick and string division (stole that one from Henry) Segh Gilham took the gold for the gents and Rhiannon Wood for the ladies with Rebecca Ogston close behind!
The Teams ended with Bristol barely beating Bath to the gold and Exeter secure in third. For the compound, Swansea easily won gold (the power of 2 people showing up) with Bristol and Plymouth behind.
Thanks to all who submitted scores! The full score sheet can be downloaded here:
Leg 2 – Swansea (Experienced)
It was lovely to see everyone there as well as some fresh faces, hopefully, everyone had a good time with all the shenanigans (and shooting I suppose). We got a little fancy with the use of PDAs thanks to some Alex W connections which hopefully was enjoyed by all the archers. We’ll aim to get PDAs to as many competitions as we can! But don’t worry about SWWU getting too well run because we ended up running over the time and had to do the awards outside (we may never run a comp on time).
As usual thanks to Swansea for hosting, to all those who took pictures and to SWWU Alumni: Will, Aubrey, Tom and Connor for helping out and judging! Without further ado let’s get into the results for the leg.
The REM was a tight competition but Alex W pulled ahead with a commanding lead and easily won gold (he told me to say that). Behind him was Luke Burch with silver and Adam Wild with Bronze. On the women’s side, Cardiff’s only archer Samantha Roberts secured gold with the Bristol women Magdalena Kazmeirczak and Sheryl Shen taking silver and bronze respectively.
On the compound front, Dan Hickman of Swansea took home the men’s gold and Amy Victoria Bode of Bristol took the women’s gold! The longbow men were a category of one and Segh Gilham dominated it for the gold. The competition for the women was much tighter with Rebecca Ogston just beating Rhiannon Wood to win the gold for Swansea.
Finally, competition was tense in the men’s barebow with UWE’s Aaron Shanks beating Parker Dowell and Harry Marsh from Aberystwyth to take the win. Swansea’s Sian Hughes and Naeve Hopkins took gold and silver for the ladies with Abi Cox securing bronze
The day ended with a solid experienced team win for Bristol with Exeter and Bath battling it out for silver and bronze respectively. For the compound teams, the presence of two Swansea archers easily secured the gold. Bristol came second and Exeter third.
The full results can be found on the Ianseo.
These two legs have firmly placed Bristol on the top of the league standings but Exeter and Bath are close behind and a lot can change over a year! The full standings are on the standings page of the website.
We’re also very pleased to introduce the official SWWU Mascot Stealing League as if there wasn’t enough mascot stealing happening at comps. This is a very fun game that will run alongside all comps with a proper ruleset and a scoring system! Thanks to Asher for setting this up and you can find the rules and scores here.
Make sure to get your entries in for the second part of leg 2 which is novice only! The deadline for entries is the 17th of November and will be hosted again at Swansea on the 23rd. Following that will be a Portsmouth at Plymouth on the 15th of December and a Frostbite at Exeter on the 25th of January. The prospectus for leg 2: part 2 can be found here!
