Every year Sway Bowmen take a team to Waterside archery club to compete for the Sway Water trophy. More friendly rivalry than grudge match, it is nonetheless hotly contested and the team are always hungry for the win.
On a fine and still day confidence was high and a party atmosphere prevailed. We’d had a couple of setbacks in the run up – Oli Cornish was shooting with a hastily borrowed bow having had his own longbow break in practice just 2 days before; our tournaments officer (and usually the lynchpin of away events), Jem Mason, was unable to take part due to (not archery related) injury and some of our elite archers were away at other shoots. However, a team of 23 had remembered the clock change and appeared in various states of alertness to take part.
Each archer competes as an individual in their own discipline. They shoot a ‘Stafford’ round which consists of 6 dozen arrows shot at an 80cm target at 30 metres. The top 16 of the 23 archers present were then matched against the top 16 from Waterside to ascertain who has won the interclub trophy.
It was a good day for Sway! Our medals were as follows:
Women’s recurve - Gold -Jodie Green
Silver - Charlie Ecclestone
U14 Women’s recurve - Gold -Skye Ecclestone
50+ Women’s barebow -Gold -Victoria Hopkins
Silver - Theresa Shelley
Women’s 50+ longbow -Gold - Jo Long
Men’s 50+ compound - Gold - Keith Cheshire
Men’s 50+ barebow - Gold - Bob Hughes
Bronze - Phil Green
Men’s longbow - Silver - Oli Cornish
Men’s recurve - Silver - Matt Cooper
Men’s 50+ recurve - Bronze - Nick Phillips
As the medals were awarded we became more confident and so it was not entirely a surprise when it was announced that the coveted (brand new!) trophy was awarded to Sway. Oli said, ‘in the words of the current youth, we ‘slay’ at Sway!’ A great start to the shooting season.