Hello from your new Tournaments Officer

As those of you at the AGM last Sunday will know, it’s been decided to create a new committee post, that of tournament officer / tournament team captain and I’ve taken on the role.

For those who don’t know me: I’m the club’s senior recurve archer in terms of age, experience and handicap (so yes one of the lunatics shooting at a target so far away you need binoculars to see it), I’ve been an archer on and off for the past 50 years and have a fair amount of tournament experience under my belt.

Exactly what my role involves will no doubt develop over time as it’s new to the club but the gist of it as I see it is :-

  • Keeping an eye on what is happening locally in the tournament scene and identifying possible candidates for the club to enter archers/teams for

  • Coordinating club entries for tournaments

  • Encouraging club members with suitable levels of experience and ability to consider joining the ‘tournament scene’

  • Working closely with the club records officer and coaching staff to provide as much support as we can for archers interested in developing their tournament skills


If I can dispose of a couple of ‘myths’ up front :-

  1. Tournaments are NOT solely the province of archers who are Robin Hood’s more accurate brother. Most of you are working on ‘252’ rounds as part of your development, if you can consistently shoot 252s or better at a distance you will by no means be 'out of contention' in an equivalent tournament round. The 252 round is in fact a fairly stiff test of your ability, especially at longer distances, for example if you shoot to 252 standard for a York round (100, 80 and 60 yards) your score will not be far short of Master Bowman which is top 4% in the country!

  2. You don’t need to be shooting out to 80 or 100 yards to enter tournaments (except for Record Status tournaments which are usually WA1440, York/Hereford or WA70). Most other commonly shot rounds come in many ‘flavours’ - for example if a tournament says it is ‘Westerns’ the Western round comes in variations from 100 / 80 yards (New Western) to 30 / 20 yards (Western 30) so all levels of experience are catered for, Archery is quite good that way.


One thing I cannot overemphasise is that this is in no way intended to create a ‘club within a club’, it’s purely aimed at providing additional development opportunities for members who are interested in competitive shooting and potentially progressing to County, Region or even National level.

That’s an intro to what I see the new role involving at this point, no doubt you will be hearing more from me on an annoyingly regular basis but in the meantime if you’re potentially interested in looking at the competitive side of archery please collar Adrian, Sophie or myself.

Martin Jackson

BOW tournaments officer

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