After an excellent indoor season, both at home and abroad, during which she broke two national records, Leamington’s recurve archer Naomi Folkard, won her first two major outdoor shoots of the 2013 season: the Dearne Valley Field Tournament in Yorkshire and Meriden Archery Club’s world record status target archery tournament. 

At the Dearne Valley Field Tournament Folkard shot 354 for the unmarked distances on the Day 1 course, and 356 for the marked distances on Day 2, giving her a combined total of 710.  This put her well ahead of Caroline Baldry second with 612, and Michelle Kiddy third with 568.  It also gave Folkard her final qualifying score (578) for this year’s international field archery events.  On the basis of this, Folkard is hoping to be selected for the World Games to be held in Colombia at the end of July.  (She earned the GB ladies’ recurve place in the Games when she won the bronze medal at last year’s World Field Archery Championships.)

Last weekend Folkard, turned to target archery, in which she is currently ranked 1st in GB, 3rd in Europe and 14th in the world.  The Meriden FITA Star tournament as usual attracted many top GB archers.  Folkard shot consistently well throughout to finish on 1312 for the ladies’ FITA round of 12 dozen arrows over 4 distances.  This was an excellent score at the start of the season and significantly ahead of Rebecca Martin (Trent Valley) 1258 and Jeanetta Braun (Brent Valley) 1257.

Also shooting from Leamington were recurve Brian Tustin (1113), and compounds Chris Earp (1305), Jon Nixon (1275) and Margaret Nixon (1238).