UK Student Archery Association

Early wins for Nottingham, Southampton [10/Nov/09]

Cambridge hosted the first regional league fixture of the 2009/10 season on Sun 1st Nov, where BUTC champions Nottingham served up a formidable winning total of 2278. This would be good at any stage of the season, but coming so early in November, sympathy then for Loughborough who scored 2236 but were over 40 points adrift. Defending BUTTS league champions Warwick managed 2189 for third, although it is worth noting that Warwick also finished third in the opening BUTTS league match of last season (to the same opposition, in the same order) and went on to claim the BUTTS title by going the rest of the season unbeaten. Hosts Cambridge finished last in the match, the first time this has happened since the 4-team match format was brought in, despite a respectable Light Blue total of 2158.

Four archers in the match went over 570, with Stefan Schoppmann (Nottingham) on 583, edging out team-mate George Harding who shot 579. A 576 from Loughborough's Matthew Cole and a 574 from Warwick's Matt Dale mirrored the performance of their respective teams. Nottingham's formidable total was rounded off by Christopher Fry who also just missed out on a 570 with 568, and James Carr on 548. Despite their BUTC triumph in 2009, Nottingham have never won the BUTTS senior league championship, the only one of BUTTS' original six teams not to have done so.

Nottingham also won the novice match with a (team of 4) score of 1714, nearly 200 clear of Loughborough, who were themselves clear of Cambridge third and Warwick fourth. Top novice was closely contested with Oscar Thornton (Loughborough) scoring 467 against 466 from Wenbo He (Nottingham).

The Stag Hill Open was hosted by Surrey on Sat 31st Oct. The competition features a student team round in parallel with the open competition. Here, Southampton narrowly ran out winners over Surrey 1561 to 1543 (FITA 18 team of 3). The Southampton team comprised Richard Whiter, Sam Bird and Emyr James whilst Surrey were Matthew Sharpe, Toby Williams and Matthew Brown. Oxford beat Kent to third place 1478 to 1453, despite a 548 from Sam Perkins (Kent) who scored 548, leaving him top uni gent and 3rd overall.

Towards the end of last season Southampton showed a huge improvement in form, most notably surging to 4th and 3rd at BUCS Indoors and Outdoors, but too late to avoid finishing 4th in the SEAL table. Like Nottingham, they have never won a senior regional league title, having competed in SEAL for four years and in SWWU for the four years prior to that. This year however, both clubs look in a good position to break their respective ducks.