The last three weekends have seen the three big indoor competitions of the season for student archers.
The British Universities Team Championships (BUTC) were held in Edinburgh on 3rd March. BUTC is a standalone competition, separate from the usual league and championships. It follows a knockout format, with a "Bray I" round (2.5 dozen arrows at a 40cm face from 18m) used to decide the draw for the knockout. The knockout round involved six 60mm hit/miss targets, with each member of the three person team having two arrows to shoot at them in 40 seconds. There was four ends in each knockout round, giving a maximum score of 24.
I was a member of Sheffield's B team (which became the A team thanks to some dodgy admin!) We qualified 25th out of 30 teams and hence were drawn against 5th placed Durham A in the first knockout round… After two ends we were actually winning 2-1, but that was more down to Durham A's incompetence rather than our brilliance :) They ended up beating us 9-3 but I think we put in a reasonable performance.
The North of England Universities Archery League (NEUAL) Indoor Championships were held in York on 10th March. This was a standard Portsmouth round of five dozen arrows at a 60cm face from 18m. I scored 467, which is only three less than my personal best. I think that was good enough for about tenth in the individual men's novice standings but I'm not exactly sure. The Sheffield novice team of myself, Chris Griffiths and Joe Everitt came third overall, earning us a shiny bronze medal each - which I've promptly, erm, misplaced. I'm sure it'll turn up eventually :$
  
Finally, the British Universities Sports Association (BUSA) Indoor Championships were held today in Leeds. This follows the same format as the NEUAL Indoor Championship but involves all of the British universities who compete at archery, not just those in the North of England. My score today was 463, which on the face of it is not too bad, but the *very* poor photo of my scoresheet (as taken by my phone) shows just how lucky I was:
The score for each of my dozens were 79, 82, 98, 99 and 105, with 98 having been my previous best for a dozen before today. I think that a side-effect of having to get up at 5:30am today to get to Leeds in time for a 9am start was that I was still asleep for my first two dozen shots!
Since that was my last student indoor competition as a novice, it's heartening to know that I'm capable of scores which won't embarrass me as a senior - my current personal best is 470 but if I could string five dozens together like my last dozen today (I wish!) then I'd have a whopping 525! I think that just demonstrates more than anything that consistency is very much the name of the game.
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