Today, Mon 16th May, Woking hosted Guildford for stage 2 of the On Target competition. Sorry we didn’t get this widely publicized, the date was only agreed on Sunday afternoon.

For this round the Woking team was made up of Helen Ruffle, Matt Tuck, Chris Mott and Roy Watts.

The match was closely fought between the 2 teams with the low sun making it very challenging for the Compound archers. After the team round Guildford had edged ahead. Woking pulled back the lead during the compound and recurve pairs, winning both. Woking then managed to hold onto the lead during the individual round and won by the overall match by 11 point to 10, a reverse of last years result.

Congratulations to the Woking team and thank you to Guildford for a challenging shoot and your great company.

Following her first International trip to Rome last year Eleanor was selected to represent GB at the European Youth Cup in Heviz and so last week set off for Hungary.

In the individual 60m 720 ranking round Eleanor rather surprised herself by shooting a huge UK National Record of 645 (having added a point to it a fortnight previously) to end up placed 4th out of 53 cadet girl archers from 19 countries.

As top placed GB cadet girl Eleanor was paired with top placed GB cadet boy Thomas Nairn and they found themselves ranked seventh at the start of the Mixed Team round on Day 2. First off they were drawn against Malaysia and made short work of them beating them 6-0, then it was the turn of second seeds Italy who were seen off 5-3, and Luxembourg, beaten 5-1 in the semis. That set up a showdown with France and, although the top seeds did not get it all their own way, they eventually seized the advantage and the gold medal but Eleanor and Thomas were delighted with their first GB silver medal!

In the individual H2H matches on Day 3 Eleanor beat Romania 6-0 and then Malaysia 6-4 to set up a quarter finals tie with Marlena Kocaj of Poland but, despite Eleanor shooting three 27 ends, the Pole was on top form, winning 6-0 and going on to gain silver.

On Day 4 Eleanor joined with fellow GB cadet girls Amy and Alyssia in the Team Cadet round. They beat Belarus 6-2 but then came up against the number one seeds France whom they took to a tie-break but it was France who went on to win silver.

Eleanor would like to thank all her friends and WAC who have supported her archery over the years, she couldn’t have achieved any of this without you all!

(Photo of Eleanor and Tom with the French Mixed Team after their silver medal match.)

On Saturday at WAC we hosted the CSAA Surrey Longbow Shoot. Chris Gill, from Farnham, was the Tournament Organiser and thanks must go to him for all his hard work.

Fourteen targets filled with longbow archers was quite a sight, the weather was fantastic and there were some great scores. I’m pleased to report that WAC’s very own James Woodgate won Gold for Junior Gent.

The Mayor of Woking came along to present the awards at the end as Lord Paramount. Unfortunately he was unable to try out one of the Longbows as he had broken a finger a few days before which was a great shame as he had tried 49 sports over his time as Mayor and archery was going to be the finale!

Thanks must go to all the Woking archers who helped out on the day; Sue for running the BBQ, Mark & Candy for scoring & helping out all round, Helen for running the kitchen & Alan R, Sean, Alex R, James & Keith P for setting out the field with Chris Gill.

(Thanks to Helen Ruffle for the report and photos.)

We’re thrilled to be able to announce that Louisa has been selected to represent England at the Junior Home Nations at the JNOC this July. This is Louisa’s first call up to represent England and she is rightly very excited!

Whilst we are very proud to have a couple of archers at WAC that currently represent GB what is possibly less known is the fantastic work that some of our members also do to support AGB at national tournaments and selection shoots across the year.

If you have wondered where Candy and Mark have been over recent weekends I’m pleased to tell you that they have been up at Lilleshall as part of a select band of people asked by AGB to help run the Senior Selection

Shoot and the Para Selection Shoot. Candy and Mark’s expertise as tournament organisers is well known and without people like them, archers like us would be much worse off!

Please give them a well-deserved round of applause!

(Here is a photo of them with Eleanor at the AGB Senior Selection Shoot earlier this month and a photo of Eleanor competing against Naomi Folkard at the same event.)

Hot on the heels of her selection to represent Great Britain in the Archery World Cup Stage One in Shanghai, AGB have just announced Andrea’s selection to also represent Great Britain at the European Archery Championships in Nottingham on the 23-29th May! Commencing with the qualification and elimination rounds at the University of Nottingham during the week, the finals will be hosted in a high spec, purpose built arena in the heart of the city in Old Market Square on the weekend of 28th & 29th May – the compound finals taking place on Sat 28th May.

Competing at this international level is the result of years of hard work, training and competition experience at the highest level and we are very proud to have an archer of Andrea’s ability as a long-term member of WAC.

Andrea is already out in Shanghai with the rest of the GB team and we wish her, and them, the best of luck in the qualification rounds which start tomorrow (Wed 27th April). These will be followed by the Individual H2Hs on Thursday with the team rounds on Friday and the medal matches on Saturday.

Good luck Andrea!!

A Woking team made up of Helen Ruffle, Jane Lawrence-Tuck, Chris Mott and Roy Watts visited CMO in Croydon for the first round of this years On Target competition on Sunday 24th Apr.

Sat on top of a hill with a great view of London as a backdrop the Woking team took on CMO to successfully win the round by 12 points to 9. Congratulations to them for a great win, with much fun had.

Many thank to CMO for hosting Woking for round 1.

Seven WAC archers opened their 2016 competition season with a trip to the Pagoda Shoot at Richmond, so named after the Kew Gardens Pagoda which can be clearly seen in the photo. The shoot is split over two fields with one shooting a Windsor round (3 dozen at 60/50/40yds) and the other shooting an Albion round (3 dozen at 80/60/50yds).

They had a fantastic days shooting; the weather was sunny and quite windy but became a little cold towards the end.

Woking archers came away with a fair few medals & trophies!
Congratulations to:
Louisa Piper – 1st Place Junior Ladies Recurve – Windsor round
Olga Sokolovskaya – 2nd Place Ladies Barebow – Windsor round
Luke Mathews – 1st Place Gents Barebow – Windsor round
Sean McArdle – 1st Place Gents Longbow – Windsor round

Alan Ruffle & Keith Pritchard both shot well on the Albion field, and Helen Ruffle on the Windsor field, but their competition was very strong.

Thanks to Royal Richmond archery club for putting on another great shoot!

(Thanks to Helen Ruffle for the competition report and photo.)

As we reported back in November, Abi Embury has landed her first National Award with a fantastic second place (U10 Girl Compound) in the AGB Summer Metrics and here’s a photo of her with her Medal and Certificate – well done Abi!

WAC juniors completed the line-up with wins for Eleanor (Recurve), Louisa (Recurve) and James (Longbow) in their respective age groups and James also adding a third place in Recurve for good measure.

We have received the results for the 2016 Archery GB January Challenge and yet again our WAC archers have achieved great things. Almost 2000 archers from around the country sent in their best Portsmouth scores, shot during January, up by 250 entries on 2015.

Huge congratulations to Matthew Tuck on winning the Gents Compound, with over 150 people taking part in this category, this is a superb achievement. His winning score was an amazing 591 points out of a maximum of 600 points!

Although no specific junior categories, congratulations also go to Eleanor Piper for coming third and Louisa Piper for coming 15th in the Ladies Recurve category of 223 archers. In the largest category of 560 entrants, Gents Recurve, James Woodgate was 146th with the highest position by a 13-year-old by 50 places!