Birmingham win the double at BUTTS Champs!

Birmingham archers made history on the 19^th March 2016; they won the BUTTS league experienced shield for the first time in 20 years! The pressure was on this weekend as the team travelled to Nottingham Trent University to compete in the BUTTS League Indoor Championships, tied point for point with Warwick for the title. In order for Birmingham to win the league, they had to win the championships, and they did it in style, with a first place medal in each of the four recurve categories!

In gents recurve, sports scholar Ashe Morgan stepped up and shot an incredible 593/600 to take the gold medal from Warwick’s Tom Hall by 15 points! Also in the gents top ten were Francis Berti and Christopher Avins on 563 and 561 respectively. In ladies recurve, Rebekah Tipping finished on 567 to take the gold, ahead of Oxford’s Charlie Birch, by 5 points. Catherine Jackson also shot a solid score of 550 to finish in 5^th place.

Birmingham novices were as solid as ever, finishing the league unbeaten and storming to victory in the championships, with Tim Spankie winning novice gents recurve on 527, and Tupa Silva winning ladies recurve on 520, an impressive 41 points clear of second place!

The indoor championship event is different to the other league fixtures as it involves a head to head event, where the top 8 archers face off against one another for an extra set of medals. The Birmingham archers didn’t let down here either with gold medals for both Rebekah Tipping and Time Spankie, silver medals for Ashe Morgan and Tupa Silva, and a bronze medal for Catherine Jackson, who battled to win this medal after seeding in 5^th place in the ranking round!

After the competition, the archers went to The Crown Plaza in Nottingham to attend the BUTTS ball and receive their awards. The experienced team of Ashe Morgan, Rebekah Tipping, Francis Berti and Christopher Avins won an extra set of gold medals for their championship result. Their total score was 2287/2400, followed by Loughborough on 2264 and Warwick on 2255. This also sealed the result for the league, where Birmingham and Warwick were previously tied, but after this event Birmingham took the top spot. The team from the day were then were joined by Team Captain Sam Rees to pick up the shield for the BUTTS league.

The novice team of Tim Spankie, Tupa Silva, Guy Coop and Jamal Rahman picked up their gold medals for the championship event too, and also received their shield for winning the league.

There were extra awards given out at the event too, a trophy for highest scoring archer in each category combined over all league fixtures, was presented. The ladies recurve trophy went to Birmingham’s Rebekah Tipping. Another award was presented to Tupa Silva for highest scoring lady novice in a separate competition known as “Ultimate Archer” where scores for three different rounds over the indoor season must be submitted to the league organiser in order to compete.

Our archers had a fantastic weekend that marked the end of the best indoor season for Birmingham in 20 years. They should all be incredibly proud of themselves and their team mates! We look forward to much of the same for BUCS and BUTTS Outdoor champs!

Coach Richard Cambridge said this about the result: "I'm so pleased for the team. Their persistent, focused hard work continues to bring them success. We are now looking forward to the challenges of the outdoor season."

Photos courtesy of David Richardson and Rebekah Tipping.

BUTTS Leg 4!

This Sunday saw the 4^th leg in the BUTTS archery league take place in Birmingham. There were good results all round and Brum fought a strong home match, securing 6 individual medals! Ashe Morgan, current BUCS record holder, shot 589 out of a possible 600 to beat Warwick’s Tom Hall to victory. Morgan shot an incredible 50 tens out of 60 arrows to steal the gold from this year’s BUCS gold medallist. The bronze BUCS medal winning trio of Francis Berti, Sam Rees and Chris Avins came in 4^th, 5^th and 6^th with 569, 565 and 564 respectively, making sure there were 4 Birmingham archers in the top 6.

In the ladies category success continued for Rebekah Tipping and Catherine Jackson as they finished in 2^nd and 3^rd, Rebekah getting pushed out of the top spot by Madeleine Meatyard of Warwick who has come back from her one point defeat by Tipping at BUCS. Tipping brought home silver in this leg with 555, and Jackson collected bronze with 544. The top four was rounded off by UOB sport scholar Alice Cotton on 531, while Katie Wood finished in 6^th place with 520 securing 4 Birmingham archers in the top 6 for the ladies.

There were successes in other categories too in this leg as Birmingham entered archers from other disciplines. Dominic Quiney made his debut for Birmingham, shooting longbow and finishing on 259 to win a gold medal for the home team. Rebekah Tipping shot compound in the second session after recurve in the first session and finished on 550, just 1 point below the top lady compound.

The Birmingham novices have gone from strength to strength this year as Tim Spankie, fresh from his 5^th place at BUCS two weeks ago, shot a new competition personal best of 523, destroying his closest competition by 11 points! The novice gents continue the trend of 4 Birmingham archers in the top 6, with Jamal Rahman, Guy Coop and Daniel Adams finishing in 4^th, 5^th and 6^th with solid scores of 487, 482 and 478 respectively.

In the lady novice category, Tupa Silva finished on 479 to secure another silver medal for Birmingham in this leg, placing one medal position ahead of this year’s BUCS indoors silver medallist from Warwick.

In the team category, Birmingham had a fantastic week with both experienced and novice teams finishing in first place! Our novice team have now won their fourth leg in a row and remain unbeaten!

This is the second time a double victory for Birmingham has happened this season: in the first BUTS leg in November our experienced team tied on points with Warwick and won first place on tens, but in this leg, Birmingham won in style, beating Warwick by 29 points! Warwick finished 3^rd overall, behind Loughborough, when the results from this match were combined with the match taking place in Derby, where the other half of the league were competing. This means Birmingham and Warwick are now tied for first place, and it all comes down to the results of BUTTS champs which takes place at Nottingham Trent on 19^th March! If Birmingham win the league, this will be the first time Birmingham have won since 1995, keep  up the good work and bring home the BUTTS title next month!

Team Captain Sam Rees had this to say: “I'm very proud of both our experienced and novice teams. Especially how far our experienced team has come since last year, we look to make our mark in BUTTS league history as the team that brought the league cup home after 20 years!”

Final Results can be found here: 

https://archery-scoring.mjtamlyn.co.uk/tournaments/birmingham-butts-2016/results/by-round/html/

Photos Courtesy of David Richardson

BUCS Indoors 2016

BUCS indoors is the largest single day indoor competition in the UK, with over 700 archers shooting this year over 3 sessions. The competition takes place at The International Centre in Telford and every year, the standard of student archery increases, with 4 new records being set this year. The competition is a Portsmouth, which means 60 arrows are shot in groups of 3 at a 60cm target face 20 yards away. The target face has ten scoring zones, with the centre ring being a 10. This centre ring is 6cm in diameter, and an archer will be wanting to keep their arrows in this zone as much as possible to get a score as close to 600 as possible. The current BUCS record for a male recurve archer on this round is 594, set by Birmingham’s own Ashe Morgan last year.

Birmingham University Archery Club sent a team of 16 archers to shoot at this year’s BUCS Indoor Championships. After consistently finishing top 3 at every BUTTS leg so far, we knew we were in for a good day at but we didn’t expect to come home with seven medals!

Our experienced ladies’ team of Rebekah Tipping, Catherine Jackson and Alice Cotton finished in 2^nd place, only 7 points short of Nottingham with a score of 1640 out of a possible 1800. Rebekah, who has come to Birmingham from Aberdeen University in Scotland, also finished 2^nd in the experienced lady recurve individual category with a score of 569/600. Massive congratulations also go to Catherine Jackson, who shot a new PB of 560 at the event, in just her second year of shooting!

The gents’ team came home with medals too, finishing in 3^rd place, just 10 points behind Edinburgh University, thanks to three solid scores from Francis Berti on 573, Chris Avins on 563 and Team Captain Sam Rees on 558. Francis also finished in 4^th place in the experienced gents individual category.

Our seniors brought home all the medals, but mentions must also go to our novices, who have only been shooting for 5 months but have consistently topped the BUTTS novice league table every match this year. Special mentions go to Tim Spankie for finishing 5^th in Novice gents on 519 and Megan Salfairso for finishing 7th in Novice lady recurve on 482!

“A good effort from everyone. A real pleasure to be a part of it.” – Richard Cambridge, coach

“Not only did novice team do respectably well in their first BUCS tournament but our experienced team achieved some impressive podium finishes. But more importantly the teamwork and support shown that day is something we should all be incredibly proud of and definitely something we should continue to carry forward into other upcoming tournaments.” – Bryony Peters, Club Captain

Link (s):

Final results: https://archery-scoring.mjtamlyn.co.uk/tournaments/bucs-indoors-2016/leaderboard/by-round/html/

Photos (courtesy of Malcolm Rees): https://www.flickr.com/photos/bimbling_along/albums/72157664431489425

Photos courtesy of David Richardson and Malcolm Rees.

University of Birmingham Archery Club!

Hello!

This blog has been set up as a place to keep together all the match reports while the website is being sorted. If anyone has any suggestions about what could be added to the blog, please feel free to email the publicity officer Rebekah Tipping on rat536@bham.ac.uk!

Happy reading!