Several archers from the county took part in this years National Indoor Championships held for the first time at the Telford International Arena on 4th & 5th December 2011. This year, over 800 archers entered the event, and the size of the venue meant that both the junior and senior events could take place on single days.
Five of our top junior archers shot on the Saturday for the Junior Nationals. Leonie Allen (recurve) and Jon Bull (compound) of Targetcraft Junior Archers, Josh Hall (compound) of WOAC, David Forster (recurve) of Nene Bowmen, and Bradley Denny (recurve)
of Archers of Raunds.
The competition format was a single Portsmouth round shot in 1 of 2 sessions in the day, with archers split into relevant age categories. Leonie shot very well finishing 12th in the junior ladies recurve under 16’s with 523. Josh continued his good season with a great score of 561 placing him in 5th place in the gents compound under 16’s, just a few points ahead of Jon who shot a great score of 553 to finish in 8th. In the under 18 gents recurve, David had an excellent round finishing in 8th place scoring 570 with a miss, just 7 points behind the eventual winner!
Last but not least, Bradley doubled up his national champion titles by winning the under 14’s gents recurve category in style with a score of 558. This means Bradley is now both the indoor and outdoor under 14’s junior national champion!
On the Sunday, Dean Edwards and James Mason of WOAC both shot in the early morning FITA 18 qualifying session. Both shot well and made the last 32 cut-off’s for the head to heads in the afternoon.
Dean shot 547 with a miss which placed him 31st in the gents recurve. James shot a great round equaling the gents compound record of 572, putting him in 17th place. Dean went out in the 1/16’s to 2nd place seed Mark Nesbitt 7-1.
James won his first round match, beating commonwealth games competitor Geraint Thomas of Wales in a close match 6-4. In the next round he met 1st seed and commonwealth games gold medalist Duncan Busby. James took the UK’s no.1 compound archer all the way to 5 sets, with the match having to be decided by a one arrow shot-off. Both shot 10’s with their final arrows but unfortunately Duncan’s 10 was just a bit closer to the centre than James’ putting him through in an exciting finish.
