UK Student Archery Association

NEUAL crowns its champions [15/May/24]

Results NEUAL match 3 were not published until after NEUAL Outdoor Championships. Sheffield win NEUAL match 3 and with it the overall NEUAL title. Leeds win the Outdoor Champs.

A top 3 finish would have been enough, but Sheffield made sure of things by winning the NEUAL match 3 with a score of 2225. In a NEUAL season where the biggest gap between 1st and 2nd had been 27 points, Sheffield won this match by a cool 107. Lancaster foreshadowed their BUTC run, with second place on 2118, just pipping Leeds into tird with 2113. Jack Wells (Sheffield) top scored in the match on 579, with Kobe Pioquinto (Lancaster) on 571. UCLan were fourth overall on 2102. Elsewhere in the match Lucy Hawkins (Keele) shot 568, with Emily Thompson (York) on 563 and Daniel Cooper (Liverpool) adding 561.

Sheffield end the season on 99 points, with Leeds their most consistent rivals on 94. Liverpool were third, back on 83, staying ahead of York on 80 and Lancaster, fifth on 74.

In the novice match Sheffield put in a dominant performance to score 1439 and win by 185 points - just over 1 point per arrow. Will Luddington (Sheffield) was the stand out performer on 554. Liverpool were second in the match on 1272. The results echoed the senior table with Sheffield winning (on 117 points), with one team, Liverpool, not far behind (on 112). The rest of the field was a further 25 points further back as the other teams took points off each other.

One extra note here is that NEUAL Novice Champs, back in December, were actually run as a team of 4, rather than team of 3 as previously reported on UKSAA. The addition of an extra archer made few meaningful changes to the order of the teams, although it did result in two separate sets of tied team scores - very unusual.

In the unsighted match, UCLan were comfortable winners on 1484 and featured match top scorer Daniel Kilgallon on 546. Keele were second 1358, with York third. Wenze Jiang (Manchester) scored 526. The 19 points picked up by Keele saw them finish top of the Unsighted table on 105 points - a strong end to the unsighted team season 2nd-2nd-1st-2nd propelled them to the title. Huddersfield held on to second place with 99 and UCLan bounced back to third on 98. UCLan did not shoot at the NEUAL Indoor Champs, so despite winning 4 out of the 6 legs they are only third overall - they had led the table by 12 points at one stage.

These results see Sheffield equal York's record of 5 senior NEUAL titles, as they regain the title they won in 2022. Defending champions Leeds were second - no club has successfully defended NEUAL since 2006. Sheffield and Leeds have now finished 1st and 2nd in all three post-Covid seasons. Third place for Liverpool is their best result since 2017. MMU's 10th spot is their best since they were 8th, back in their first NEUAL campaign in 2012. Sheffield also won the novice NEUAL title, also for the fifth time. Sheffield, who hosted BUTC 2024, are odds on be the club to perform such a senior/novice recurve team league double this season.

See the final standings on NEUAL 2023/24 page.

NEUAL Outdoor Champs were held in York over the weekend of the 11th and 12th May. Totals from WA720 and WA900 were added together to generate a top 4. Leeds managed to pip Sheffield to top spot, 5142 against 5057. Liverpool were third on 4488. Sheffield won the novice event, UCLan won the unsighted event. Team results are on the NEUAL 2023/24 page, with links to the relevant ianseo pages. Samson Wang (Leeds), Will Luddington (Sheffield) and Daniel Kilgallon (UCLan) were the top recurve, novice and barebow scorers.

Daniel Kilgallon (UCLan) broke the All Unis records for both the double 50m round and the WA900. For the 50m round, he broke the record of 544 with 569. For the WA900, he broke the record of 722 with 756. In both cases, those were his own scores from BUCS Outdoors 2023. With the 50m round, Leon Cao (Warwick) scored 559 on the Sunday. Because UKSAA ended up processing the single day TOUCAN Outdoor Champs event first, Cao was accidentally attributed with having broken the record himself - sorry!

Para. added 16th May Jenna Anne Clarke (Liverpool) broke the All Unis record for ladies compound novice WA900. Clarke's score of 764 beat the previous record by 57 points.