On Saturday 31st October we had a fun Halloween shoot. Twelve targets of zombies, pumpkins, witches, ghosts, floating knights and flour filled balloons! Thank you very much to Sue for cooking all the hotdogs etc and for creating a fantastic graveyard cake, also Mark, Candy, Chris M, Roy, Ollie and my family again for help on the day setting up and supplying the music, lanterns and floodlights. (Helen Ruffle)

A great day at the Surrey Field shoot for Woking Archers. It appeared foggy as everyone arrived for this years shoot though no sign of rain that has been so prominent for the last couple of years.

The fog cleared to provide a lovely days shoot for everyone taking part.

Some great results for Woking:
Alan Ruffle – 1st place Surrey Longbow
Luke Mathews – 1st place Surrey Barebow
Mike Lewis – 2nd place Surrey Barebow
Olga Sokolovskaya – 1st place Surrey Barebow
Paul Jay – 2nd place Surrey American Flat Bow
Roy Watts – 3rd place Surrey Recurve

Thanks to the Surrey team for organising a great shoot.

The Draft Archery GB Target Archery National Rankings 2015 are now out, congratulations to Andrea Gales for her No.1 UK Ladies Compound, an awesome achievement, retaining this ranking for the 2nd year in a row.

Congratulation to all the other Woking archers who gained ranking’s. Another notable placing is 9th place ranking in the senior ladies recurve for Eleanor Piper, again a great achievement.

A full listing can be found here

Ever wondered how the rankings are calculated, here is a brief explanation.
For compound archers the points gained represent each archer’s best two ladies/gents WA 1440 rounds and best three WA 50m rounds all from shoots with World or UK Record Status plus their best match score from an associated compound match round.
For recurve archers, the points represent each archer’s best two ladies/gents WA 1440 rounds and best three WA 70m rounds all from shoots with World or UK Record Status; in addition recurve archers are required to shoot an associated Olympic round but the score is not included in the total.
For barebow and longbow archers, the points represent each archer’s best two ladies/gents WA 1440 rounds and best three WA 70m rounds all from shoots with World or UK Record Status.

Eleanor Piper has been nominated for the Freedom Leisure Young Sports Personality of the Year as part of the Sports Woking Awards 2015 which take place on 14th October.

It has been a fantastic year for Eleanor with her first GB Selection for the European Youth Cup in Rome, becoming Double U18 National Champion and finishing the season with Senior Qualification Scores which take her into the Archery GB 2016 Senior Qualification Shoots.

Eleanor though is quick to point out that she wouldn’t have been able to do any of this if she weren’t part of such a brilliant club and says a huge thank you to everyone that has helped her in her success this season.

Congratulations to our fabulous WAC 2015 Knock Out finalists Keith Pritchard and Jessica Hammond. After a closely fought contest, and after handicap adjustments, Jessica won by just 60 points.

They were though both winners!

Thanks to Helen Ruffle for this report and photos!

We had a great day and everything ran smoothly including the weather which was perfect, if not a little gusty at times. Thank you to Nicola for cooking all the bacon rolls served up during the course of the morning.

35 archers took part shooting the York, Hereford or Bristol 1-5 rounds which usually take up most of the day. Unfortunately not all could stay on for the BBQ at the end but it did give Brenda and me time to collate the scores.

A huge thank you to everyone that helped on the day, we hope you all enjoyed it and many congratulations to all of our winners!

Here is a link to some more photos: here

For their final outdoor shoot of the season, and in glorious sunshine (why have we waited all year for such wonderful weather?!), Eleanor and Louisa set off to Meriden to shoot a Windsor Round. Here they are pictured with their friend Pip Taylor who celebrated her 19th birthday by winning the ladies round; Eleanor won the Short Windsor with a National Record claim of 948 and Louisa won the SJ Windsor with a NR claim of 966 (out of a max 972 points). A great way to end the season.

The 2015 Woking Open results can be found on the Tournament page here

You can also find some pictures from the 2015 WAC Tournament here

Last weekend eight WAC archers travelled up to the club that lays claim to being in the geographical centre of England for the Meriden Double WA1440. It was a beautiful weekend and Meriden Archery Club laid on a great two days of shooting which resulted in overall wins for Andrea Gales for Ladies Compound and Eleanor Piper for Ladies Recurve.

Roy, Paul, Chris Woodgate, Matt and Jane and Louisa also took part (Louisa, aged 12, managed to come a respectable 8th Lady Recurve including shooting a second round 1141 to claim her 1100 Senior Fita Star!).

Two WAC archers will be taking part in the National Series Final in Nottingham this weekend. On Recurve Saturday, Eleanor Piper will be shooting in an AGB Academy Mixed Trio team round and on Compound Sunday Andrea Gales will be shooting for the Compound National Series Title itself.

And just in case you thought Andrea would be taking it easy on the Saturday, she’s not! Andrea has been asked to provide the commentary for the AGB YouTube video coverage so why not “tune in” and follow all the action?

Good luck to both of them!