News from 1st quarter of 2008
Firsts for Michael and Caitlin
Michael McCarthy and sister Caitlin, went in opposite directions over the Easter holiday, both to shoot rounds new to them.
On Easter Monday Michael, with Paul of course, went to the Old Oundle Double Clout just outside Peterborough. The Fens in that cold north wind! Luckily the Old Oundle shooting ground is adjacent to the Plough Public House, which provided a good warming buffet. Michael shot a special junior distance of 40 yards, and scored 100 for the double clout plus six ‘petticoats’. This earned him a gold medal and an Easter egg. He was even more successful in the raffle winning 3 more eggs, a fluffy dog called ‘Rover’, a bottle of wine for his mum and a longbow string for Paul. Paul is keeping his score quiet, but it was substantially less than Michael’s.
Caitlin shot her first FITA 18 competition last Sunday, at the Staffordshire Junior Indoor Championships. Shooting to her handicap she scored an excellent 410. She won the Visitor’s gold medal, but also beat the Staffordshire junior lady champion who scored 390.
Well done to both Michael and Caitlin.
Folkard Leads Olympic Selection Contest
After the first of the 3 stages of the Olympic selection process Naomi Folkard (Dunlop and Leamington) is in the lead, ahead of Athens bronze medallist Alison Williamson (Long Mynd) and Charlotte Burgess (Bruntwood). The competition over two days at RAF Cosford was also the shoot off for the European Outdoor Championships to be held in France in May.
The first day’s shooting comprised two FITA 70 rounds, each of 6 dozen arrows over 70 metres, followed on the second day by three rounds of head-to-head matches between up to 8 top qualifiers. There was a complicated scoring system, with bonus points (or deductions) depending on whether or not set target scores were met. There were also bonus points for match wins.
There were only 5 recurve ladies shooting for the 3 Olympic places, but competition was fierce. On Day 1 Folkard scored 644 and an excellent 660, which with bonus points gave her a total for the day of 1310.6. Williamson finished hard on her heals with 1292.5 and Burgess was third with 1269. On Day 2 there were some very high scoring matches, and Folkard won 10 of her 12 matches. The final points tally for the weekend was Folkard 2678.24, Williamson 2622.80, Burgess 2572.34, Lana Needham (Links, Scotland) 2417.00 and Emma Downie (Edinburgh University) 2412.00. All five girls will go through to the second stage of the selection process in June. They are likely to be joined by another Warwickshire archer, Philippa Lowe (Meriden), who had secured the necessary qualifying scores, but was unable to shoot last weekend.
Folkard, Williamson and Burgess are the three ladies who earned the three Olympic places for GB at last year’s World Championships in Leipzig, where they took bronze in the team event. They will now form the GB ladies recurve team for the European Championships.
Medals for Leamington Juniors
Caitlin & Bethany at Clophill
Two Leamington juniors, Bethany Roberts (11) and Caitlin McCarthy (12), finished in the medals last weekend (16 March 2008) at the popular Clophill Junior Open Portsmouth Tournament.
The event, for juniors only, was held over two sessions at the Almeda Sports Centre in Ampthill. Archers shot the Portsmouth round of 5 dozen arrows at a 60 cm face over 20 yards. Both Bethany and Caitlin shot in the under-13 recurve girls’ competition. Caitlin, who is relatively new to competition, finished on 495 points (out of a maximum of 600), which, despite a miss and a 3, was very close to her pb. After 4 dozen arrows Bethany was on 420, and appeared to be heading for a pb. However, on shooting the first arrow of the final dozen, the bowstring caught her arm quite badly, as a result of which she lost a bit of confidence, and only made 80 for the last dozen, and finished on 500. Nevertheless Bethany’s score was good enough to put her in the silver medal spot, behind Abbie Fisher (Fakenham) 530. Caitlin won the bronze medal.
Bronze for Folkard at European Indoor
Leamington's Olympic archer Naomi Folkard led the GB ladies' team to a bronze medal in the European Indoor Championships last week in Torino, Italy. In the individual competition, despite qualifying in second place in a very tough field, Folkard finished 6th.
The competition was attended by many of the World's best recurve ladies, including Natalya Erdyniyeva (Russia) world number 2, Natalia Valeeva (Italy) number 3, and Justyna Mospinek (Poland) number 6. Folkard, herself is currently ranked 20th in the world and 11th in Europe. The event took the form of an 18 m FITA round of 5 dozen arrows at a small 3 spot face for ranking both individuals and teams, followed by Olympic style head-to-head knock out matches. These matches comprised 4 ends of 3 arrows for the individuals, and in the team event 4 ends of 2 arrows for each of 3 archers.
Folkard, who was the European silver medallist in 2006 and the World bronze medallist in 2007, made an excellent start with 119 (out of 120) for her first dozen. She finished the ranking round in second place with 584. Folkard and Valeeva, who qualified in first place with a magnificent 589, were the only two ladies who did not put an arrow outside the gold. Tetyana Dorokhova (Ukraine) was third with 582, and Erdyniyeva and Kateryna Palekha (Ukraine) were equal fourth with 581. The two other British girls, Charlotte Burgess (Bruntwood) and Emma Downie (Edinburgh University) qualified in 18th and 27th places with 567 and 558 respectively. This gave the British girls, with a combined score of 1709, 5th place in the rankings, below Ukraine, Italy, Russia and Poland.
The top 32 ladies went through into the head-to-head matches. Folkard started well with the highest score in the 1/16th round, to beat her opponent Cigdem Oktem (Turkey) 118 to 113. In the 1/8th round she unfortunately came up against team mate Burgess, whom she beat 115 to 114. Her 1/4 final match was against Mospinek. who shooting erratically had been lucky to win her previous match with a lowly score of 111. However, Mospinek shot a blinder against Folkard, winning by 119 to 116. Surprisingly Valeeva also went out in this round, and Erdyniyeva had already gone out in the previos round. Dorokhova went on to take gold and Yulia Lobzhenidze (Ukraine) silver. Elena Tonetta (Italy) took bronze from Mospinek in a low scoring match 113 to 112.
In the team event the British ladies had a tough 1/4 final match against Poland, ranked 4. It was a tense affair with Poland making a flying start with a maximum 60 points to the Brit's 56. The British girls pulled back two points but went into the final end trailing by two points. However, they shot a magnificent perfect 60 to Poland's 58 to produce a tie. In a shoot-off of 1 arrow per archer GB won by 29 to 28, to take them to the semi-final match against the favourites Ukraine. They came agonisingly close to clinching a place in the final, but eventually went down by 225 to 224. In the bronze medal match they met Germany, who had beaten both Switzerland and Italy, but lost to Russia. They narrowly beat Germany by 229 to 228 to take the bronze medals.
Folkard is now returning to Britain to take part in the lengthy selection process for the Beijing Olympics, and to attempt to qualify for the World Field Championships (September 2008).
Excellent Performances at BUSA Champs
The British Universities Sports Association Indoor Archery Championships were held at York University last week (1/2 March 2008), and were well attended by hundreds of young archers from all parts of GB. These included students from Warwick, Birmingham and Coventry Universities, who produced some excellent individual performances shooting the Portsmouth round of 5 dozen arrows at a 60 cm face over 20 yards.
Two Leamington archers were shooting; Phil King for Warwick University, and Colin Geenes for Coventry University.
Phil, on 562, was part of the Warwick team of 4 non-compound archers competing against 33 other universities who fielded full teams. They did particularly well, ammassing a total of 2266 points to take second place and give the historically very strong Edinburgh club a close run for gold with 2291.
Coventry did not have a full team but Colin did well in the individual championship, coming 4th (out of 168) with a score of 579 in the mens recurve and 7th (of 22) in the mens compound with 572.
Bronze for Brian at Regional Champs
A small contingent of four Leamington archers took part last weekend (2 March 2008) in the West Midlands Regional Senior Indoor Championships, which was held together with the Worcestershire County Championships at Evesham. They all put in excellent personal performances, and Brian Tustin brought back the bronze medal in the men's recurve section.
In the men's recurve event on-form Dave Beardsley (GNAS) led the field with 565 for the 18 metre FITA round (5 dozen arrows at a small 3-spot face over 18 metres). Mike Lewis (Saints and Sinners) with 544 just pipped Brian Tustin, with 542, to the silver medal. Leamington team mate, James Scott with 535, took fourth place and the 'C' class medal . Pete Hunnisett had a slightly disappointing 502, but nevertheless finished well up the field in 12th place.
11 year old Henry Scott put in a particularly good performance for his age. His 434 gave Leamington a combined score of 2013, putting them second in the recurve team event, behind Saints and Sinners 2046. Henry also came third in the Worcestershire Junior Open competition, where he was competing against juniors of up to 18 years of age, including GB international Glen Croft (Burton Bridge) who with 577 beat all the men.
The ladies recurve scores were disappointing, the gold medal going for just 530 to Joann Lunt (Saints and Sinners). Leamington's Naomi Folkard, who was the defending champion, had to miss the event to travel to Italy for the European Indoor Championships which are taking place this week in Torino.
Superb Performance by Folkard at National Champs
Leamington Olympic archer Naomi Folkard (Dunlop, Coventry), warming up for the European Indoor Championships at the beginning of March, last weekend put in a very convincing performance at the National Indoor Championships. At the Lilleshall National Sports Centre in Shropshire, she won the ladies' recurve trophy for the fifth time, surpassing Carol Sykes who won the event 4 times.
The competition, with recurves on Saturday and compounds on Sunday involved a FITA 18 ranking round (5 dozen arrows over 18 metres at a small 3 spot face) followed by an Olympic style knock out of 12 arrow head to head matches for the top 32 qualifiers. GB Olympic bronze medallist, Alison Williamson (Long Mynd) shot in the first session, setting a very high standard with 577. Folkard, in the second session, despite recently breaking her pb in practice with 589, made a poor start dropping 7 points on her first dozen (113 out of a possible 120). However, she then improved dramatically, dropping 9 points only on the next 4 dozen arrows to finish with a superb 119 dozen, and a final, world class, ranking score of 584. This gave her first place, followed by Williamson, and Jenny Jepphsson (a Swede from Edinburgh University) 574.
There were some close high-scoring head to head matches, particularly those involving the top ladies, and it looked as though it would produce a hard fight for medals. As expected Folkard sailed through the early rounds beating Charlotte George (Isle of Man) 117 to 104 and Wendy Stevens 116 to 110. She then met Amy Oliver, the European Field Champion, winning 117 to 108, after which she had a surprisingly easy victory in the semi final, over Emma Downie, who will be a team mate in the European Indoor Championships, 116 to 104. Alison Williamson beat the on-form Jepphson in the other semi-final. The gold match between Folkard and Williamson, who are great friends and have trained together for many years at Coventry's Dunlop club, was not as tight as expected. Folkard who was shooting first started with a 10, which Williamson did not match. Folkard went into the lead after the first end of 3 arrows with 29 points to Williamson's 27. A repeat score in the second end brought them to 58 to 54. In the third end Williamson put in 3 superb arrows, all 10s, but this was not enough to pull back and they went in to the last end at 87 to 84. Folkard maintained her 10,10,9 pattern to finish on 116, while Williamson dropped a further point to finish oyn 112. Jepphsson took bronze, beating Downie 114 to112.
Folkard, together with Williamson, Dave Beardsley (GNAS) and Leroy Watson (Stafford) took the Regional Team Trophy for the West Midlands.
PHOTO: Folkard with the ladies' trophy after the event. (She is wearing the jacket of one of her sponsors, Leamington estate agent Malcolm Hawkesford. She is also sponsored by solicitors Wright Hassall.)
Medals for Leamington Archers at Wyre Forest
Ten Leamington archers travelled to Stourport on Severn yesterday for the friendly annual Wyre Forest non-record status Portsmouth. Although the medal haul was slightly disappointing after the spectacular achievements last week in the Warwickshire Indoor Championships, there were nevertheless some excellent personal performances.
Archers shot the Portsmouth round of 5 dozen arrows at a 60 cm face over 20 yards. The highest score of the day by any archer, lady or gent, recurve or compound, was 591 achieved by Leamington's Naomi Folkard shooting for Coventry's Dunlop club. This gave her first place in the ladies' recurve competition, ahead of Joann Lunt (Saints and Sinners) 566, and Sue Davis (Redditch) 553. Angela Cave (Leamington) finished on a sound 509.
The top Leamington men were not at their best this week and missed out on place medals. However, Brian Tustin picked up the 'C' class medal with 565 and Paul Roberts the 'D' class medal. Other Leamington men competing were Pete Hunnisett 551 and Paul McCarthy 521. Denis Folkard shooting recurve barebow made a pb of 487.
There was no breakdown of the awards for juniors according to age, so the relatively young Leamington juniors, 12 year old Caitlin McCarthy, 11 year old Bethany Roberts and 7 year old Michael McCarthy, up against 17 year olds, were at a serious disadvantage. Bethany neverthless achieved second place in the recurve girls' competition, with a pb of 517. Michael too shot an excellent pb of 277, and his sister Caitlin with 469 also performed well.
Leamington was initially awarded the team trophy. However as Naomi's first club is Dunlop where she has trained for many years, she was not eligible to shoot for Leamington yesterday, and the trophy was passed to Redditch.
Naomi will be competing in the National Indoor Championships next weekend, as a warmup for the European Indoor Championships next month.
Left to right in the group photograph were Brian Tustin, Angela Cave, Paul McCarthy, Caitlin McCarthy, Michael McCarthy, Denis Folkard, Pete Hunnisett and Naomi Folkard (Paul and Bethany Roberts missed the photo having competed in the morning session).
Leamington archers results are shown in full on the Tournaments page
Leamington Men Dominant at County Championships
The County Indoor Archery Championships were held at the weekend (3 Feb 2008), in combination with the County Junior Championships and the West Midlands Regional Junior Championships, at the Harry Mitchell Sports Centre in Warley. Particularly good results were achieved by archers from the Leamington with the taking the top 5 places in the men's recurve event.
All archers shot the Portsmouth round of 5 dozen arrows at a 60 cm face over 20 yards.
The men's recurve trophy went to Brian Tustin with a score of 576 out of a maximum of 600. Colin Geenes was in the lead, when with 9 arrows to go his bottom limb delaminated, and although he bravely borrowed a bow to shoot the last 9 arrows, he inevitably dropped a few points and had to be satisfied with 573 and the silver medal. Pete Hunnisett, with another excellent personal performance, took bronze with 568. James Scott and Paul Roberts were not far behind on 564 and 558 respectively. The recurve team trophy for 4 archers from one club almost inevitably went to Leamington, the team comprising Tustin, Geenes, Hunnisett and Scott. Denis Folkard won the men's recurve barebow event and Dave Hyde was third in the longbow competition with 335.
Dawn Leide with 554 had a narrow victory over Meriden's Janette Ross in the ladies compound competition.
Leamington juniors, all shooting recurve bows, put up a very good showing. Bethany Roberts with 496 took gold in the County and silver in the Regional Championships. David Jenkins, in his first competition, won the Under 16 boys sections in both events with 368 and Henry Scott (527) and Michael McCarthy (200) both took gold in their age groups of under 12 and under 9 respectively.
Henry Scott, Bethany Roberts, Caitlin McCarthy (444) and David Jenkins lifted both the county and regional junior team trophies.
Leamington results are on the Tournaments page and the full results may be downloaded from the County website.
Henry and Caitlin gain Firsts in GNAS November Challenge
Seven of our juniors took part in the annual GNAS November Challenge where archers shoot three dozen arrows at 20 yards on a Portsmouth face. Archers are allowed to shoot it as many times as they like during November and submit their highest score.
Henry Scott won the under-12 category for boys for the second year running. Caitlin McCarthy won the under-12 category for girls, narrowly beating Bethany Roberts into second place.
Our archers scores can be found on our Tournament Results page.
Olympic Award for Naomi Folkard
Naomi Folkard has been named archery's 2007 Olympic Athlete of the Year by the British Olympic Association.
A trophy is handed out annually by each of the 35 Olympic governing bodies in Britain, following the inception of the awards in 2005.
BOA Chief Executive Simon Clegg explained: "The presentation of these trophies recognises the drive, determination and commitment of athletes across all of our Olympic sports as they strive to achieve their goals in the international sporting arena."
Naomi is currently in Australia as part of the GB Elite squad's training camp in Canberra, and the news of this recognition has delighted her fellow archers, coaches and GNAS officials.
"I'm thrilled for Naomi, and this is nothing less than she deserves," said GNAS chairman, Lynne Evans. "She took part in her first Olympics in Athens, and did extremely very well to reach the last 16 and finish 11th overall. All things being equal, she'll be representing Britain at the Beijing Games later this year, and she has the ability and determination to be a serious contender for a medal.
"Since Athens, she has continued to consolidate her reputation as one of the world's most respected and accomplished archers, winning medals in international tournaments both individually, and as part of the highly successful women's recurve team with Alison Williamson and Charlotte Burgess.
"It's a very well deserved award for Naomi, she's a delightful person, a top class competitor, she works extremely hard, and she is a great ambassador for British archery."
This article, by Peter Jones, appeared on GNAS website 17 January 2008
Folkard Wins Place in European Indoor Championships
Two Warwickshire archers, having gained the necessary qualifying scores during 2007, took part in the shoot off last weekend for places in the GB team to compete in the European Championships inTorino Italy in March. They were Leamington's recurve archer Naomi Folkard and compound Chris White from Rugby. Folkard won the ladies' recurve competition to guarantee her place in Torino, but Chris, although shooting well against stiff opposition, narrowly missed out on a team place.
The shoot-off, at the Lilleshall National Sports Centre, took the form of a FITA 18 ranking round (5 dozen arrows over 18 metres at a small 3 spot face), followed by a round robin of 12 arrow head-to-head matches for the top qualifiers. The final results were calculated on the basis of the total aggregate score of all arrows shot, with the addition of bonus points for winning a match and for beating a target score, and the deduction of points for failing to achieve a target score.
Folkard scored an excellent 577 for the FITA round, giving her a good lead over Lana Needham (Links, Scotland) 559, Emma Downie (Edinburgh University) 555, Charlotte Burgess (Bruntwood) 552 and Amy Oliver (Dearn Valley) 551. She then went on to win both of her first two matches, beating both Oliver and Burgess 116 to 109. She narrowly lost her third match against Downie 113 to 114, but then came back strongly in her final match to beat Needham 117 to 109. She finished with a total of 1057.49 points, well ahead of the opposition. She will be joined in Torino by Downie (second on 1014) and Burgess (third on 1001.5).
The men's compound competition was much closer fought. White completed the ranking round in fourth place with 583, behind Neil Wakelin (Grampion Suffolk) 587, Liam Grimwood (Blackthorn) 586, and James Bingham (Birstall) 585. Despite some excellent match scores he was only able to win three of his seven matches, and in the final tally finished 11 points behind the eventual winner, Andy Rikunenko (Redditch). Rikunenko, who was lying in 7th place at the end of the ranking round, pulled back by winning 6 of his matches with very high scores. Although he shoots for Redditch he is also a member of the Leamington club
Folkard, who won individual bronze at the World Indoor Championships last year, hopes to do well in Torino. She is now in Australia with the other GB elite (recurve) archers for a thirteen day multi-country training camp as part of the preparation for the Beijing Olympics later in the year. In Beijing she hopes to improve sufficiently on her 11th place in Athens, to win an individual medal. The recurve ladies team, which won bronze at the World Championships last year, is also aiming for Olympic medals. Folkard is helped with sponsorship from Leamington-based companies, solicitors Wright Hassall and estate agent Malcolm Hawkesford.
The New Years Day Clout 2008
We decided the best cure for the day after New Years Eve would be a Clout shoot and we were rewarded with a beautifully mild January afternoon which encouraged what was probably our biggest ever turnout for a Clout shoot. Some 25 members shot at a variety of distances from 30 yards for our youngest juniors up to 180 yards for the men, some even foresaking their recurves to shoot longbow. Clout is shot at a flag in the ground and up to 5 points are awarded for arrows landing within 4 yards of it.
Initially we shot the clout round of 3 dozen arrows and the overall winner was Michael McCarthy with a score of 60 shooting at 30 yards. Caitlin McCarthy was close behind witrh a score of 57 at 80 yards, and Kelly Green shot the highest score at 120 yards, 39. At 140 yards, the ladies official distance, Karen Moss lead the way with 41 points and just to prove it was a day for the ladies Angela Cave, the only lady shooting the men's distance of 180 yards, beat all the men by scoring 37!! (hang your heads in shame). Nevertheless two of the men, James Scott (pictured) and Phil King, managed to spear one of Kathy's flags.
After the first round we adjourned for mulled wine and mince pies, after which the more hardy archers shot a half clout (18 arrows); all we had time for before it got too dark. Overall winner of the half clout was Pete Hunnisett, shooting 49 at 180 yards. Top scores at the other distances were Denis Folkard with 16 shooting barebow at 140 yards, Kathy Folkard with 9 shooting longbow at 120 yards and Isobel Roberts with 21 at 30 yards. Full results on Tournament Results page.
Overall it was a very successful event and one which we plan to repeat next year.
