Editorial Article - UKSAA

Queen Mary won their first senior competition on Sunday 10th June by beating London in a 70/60m head-to-head in the final of SEAL Outdoors, while Southampton made it an indoors/outdoors double by winning the novice competition.

The recent bad weather forced some last minute team changes with people being stranded and missing connections, but the weather forecast for the day was defied and the competition at Reading University’s fields was dry except for the odd drop of rain. The start time ended up being somewhat flexible as the host team’s archers appeared to be the only people who hadn’t been told the time that the competition was going to start.

The FITA 70/60 senior seeding round was close, with the top three teams only separated by 57 points. Tom Castle (Reading) was top scorer with 542. Another Reading archer, Siobhan Boyle, was the top scorer in the novice 60/50m competition with 456, but it was London who ended as the top senior seed and Southampton as the top novice seed.

The head-to-head competitions proved to be interesting. In teams of three, the competition was run under the ‘sets’ system. With only four teams entering, the completion went straight to the semi-finals. In the senior competition, the fourth-seeded Southampton raced into an early lead against London but was unable to sustain the pressure and eventually was defeated 6-2. Reading was whitewashed by Queen Mary in the other semi-final, a crucial miss in one end prevented Reading from registering a point.

Reading put in a consistent performance to win the third-place playoff. The introduction of timed ends for the final brought additional pressure, and London was able to handle the situation sooner. However, the second seeded Queen Mary settled down and eventually went on to dominate with some impressive scoring, winning 6-2.

Queen Mary only had one novice, and therefore didn’t have a team for the head-to-head. An injury in the Reading novice team meant that they also no longer had a full team and had to walkover their semi-final to London, but finished third due to their higher seeding. In the final, London took some time to find their feet, and by the time they did, the damage had been done. While London’s end scores improved, so had Southampton’s scores and the south coast team won 7-1.

The victorious Queen Mary team was Naveed Azam, Victoria Saduikis and Michael Gregory, while the Southampton novice team was Nimmit Prabhackar, David Williams and John Bowes.

The trophies for SEAL Outdoors and Indoors are currently in the hands of Imperial, who did not attend.