Mixed Results at SCAS Inter-Counties

The Kent team in the sunshine, shortly before the start. Philip Gower.

The 2007 SCAS Inter-Counties Senior Team Tournament was held at Andover Archers' ground on Sunday 16 September 2007. While the day started off warm and sunny with only a light breeze, by mid-morning the clouds started brewing and the wind strengthened. As a result, most of the day was shot in a stiff and very variable wind; this certainly added to the challenge of the day, but did it did stay dry and never really got uncomfortably cool.

In the last few years it has become increasingly difficult to select a recurve team able to shoot to the level that the county enjoyed, say, ten years ago; however, this seems to be a widespread phenomenon and a lot of other counties throughout the country are suffering in the same way (as is witnessed by the recent proposal to reduce the qualifying score levels for MB and Bowman classifications). Unfortunately (for us) there are several international level archers in SCAS these days and available to shoot for their counties on this occasion.

So although there was little expectation of getting among the medals this year, the recurve team were very disappointed to achieve only 9th place out of 12 counties contesting this part of the event. But this is certainly one of those occasions where that simple statistic only gives only part of the picture: with a difference of only 80 points between Kent and 5th place Surrey, it would only require an improvement of one scoring zone for each of 10 arrows per team member to rise 4 places! However above that is a very large gap, so getting into the top 3 or 4 will be a much bigger challenge.

Paul Smith Philip Gower.
Mike Brighton Philip Gower.
Jacqui Gould, who went on to win the Ginger Frith Trophy for the highest lady's recurve score of the day. Philip Gower.

The compound team fared very much better, finishing in 5th place out of 10 teams competing, but just 1 tantalising point behind 4th place Sussex (they had a miss, not us!) and less than 80 points off the medals (again this represents just 10 arrows per team member, so the margins are really quite small here too).

There were also some notable achievements, with Richard Clark putting the third highest gents' compound score of the day, only 10 points behind GB team member Mark Franklin. In the recurve event, congratulations go to Jacqui Gould who was the highest scoring lady overall with a score of 1076 and thereby the winner of the Inger Frith trophy - this will be presented to her at the Kent AGM.

Overall it was a mixed day - disappointments yes, but also some very good achievements and a platform for us to build on for future years.

The list of results and main awards can be downloaded here (in PDF format).