Good shooting and good fun at the County Indoor Champs!

There was a magnificent turnout of GAC members for the Surrey County Indoor Championships at Woking today, with 19 members taking part across the day.

The sports centre at Woking is a great venue and the County Indoor Championships are always a well run and organised event. We were shooting a Portsmouth round of 5 dozen arrows over 20 yards at a 60cm face. There were 3 sessions during the day and it was a relatively civilised start of 9.15 for the first session, and after signing in and setting up, most of the GAC team paused for the obligatory team photos before equipment inspection and sighters.

Poor Sophie Godfrey had equipment failure within the first couple of ends when her arrow rest broke. Luckily, there were plenty of coaches and helpers on hand to sort out the problem (after a kind loan of an arrow rest by Tony Fry), and the Judges allowed Sophie to catch up, which meant shooting on her own, which she did brilliantly!

The rest of the session passed relatively without incident, and by the end, I think that most of us had shot some good arrows, especially Sophie who shot a personal best despite her early equipment problems!.

After the shooting, there was a raffle and the presentation of the session prizes, which included 4 for GAC:

Tanya Tooley: Ladies Compound
Lara Evans: Girls Compound
Lauren Levy: Girls Recurve
Tony Fry: Gents Barebow.

It was brilliant to see so many GAC archers attending their County Indoor Championships, and especially good to see so many juniors – well do to Lauren, Lara, Kathryn, Meghan, Sophie, Ben and Paul.

Away competitions are fun to do, provide a reason for all of the practice we do and are a great way to meet and make new friend in the archery community. They are not ‘just for good archers’ or only for the experienced, they are open to all, regardless of age, skill or experience, and there will always be other GAC members to offer friendly help and advice.

If you would like to try an away tournament, please just ask our Away Tournaments Officer, Richard Fitzgerald, and he will be very happy to let you have a list of forthcoming shoots.