Archery is a year round sport. Some archers pile on layers of clothing until they can barely move and continue shooting throughout the winter months. However, for those who don’t like the cold or when, as this year, there are prolonged periods of rain, it is possible to shoot indoors. Your local club – Sway Bowmen – meet at Brockenhurst College across the winter, shooting a variety of rounds of 20 yards or 18 metres. At the end of the season nine of their members were brave enough to try their skills by competing in the Hampshire County Indoor archery Championships in Eastleigh.
Eastleigh is a very large competition and in a field of 166 archers from across the south it was hard to know who was a Hampshire archer and therefore competing for the coveted Hampshire Champion title. Matt Cooper said, ‘I kept looking on Ianseo (the website where scores are uploaded in real time) the whole day and just thought, ah, if I get silver or bronze I’ll take it gladly but, no! I got the gold!’ Matt is now the Hampshire Recurve archery champion!
Matt was joined in the honours by Skye Ecclestone who also achieved a gold medal. The remarkable thing is, that because of the way archery rules are structured Skye competed in the Under 14 women’s recurve competition despite being only 11 years old and despite only starting archery in 2024!