About BUTC

BUTC logo - small

Introduction

The British University Team Championships is one of the most high profile, important events in the student archery calendar - a spectacular, knockout tournament attended by the top student archery talent.

The tournament consists of two sections, a qualification/ranking round after which, all teams proceed to the elimination rounds. The knock-out phase is exciting and noisy spectator involvement is a fundamental part of the experience. The Beiter hit-miss discs and knock-out format providing an immediate and occasionally spectacular visual spectacle. Scorers are assigned to each target during the day. The tournament was designed to allow student archers to experience a taste of international level events.

Once the semi-final stage is reached the matches may be shot separately, with crowds watching these final fixtures usually over a hundred. Teams are invited to bring entrance music for this stage of the event.

Teams

Each university may field up to two teams of three archers, who must shoot recurve (or barebow) style. Teams may be named/altered at any time up to and including regsitration. It is anticipated that the best three archers will form the A team and the next 3 best archers will form the B team for each university. Archers may not be swapped between teams after that though, even if a B team member outscores an A team member.

Currently up to 32 spaces are allocated as follows:

  • Host A team
  • Other A teams
  • Host B team
  • Other B teams

For example: 24 teams (other than the hosts) enter and of those, 13 want (and are eligible for) a B team, i.e. the other 11 either didn't want one or didn't enter before the B team deadline. In this case, the host's A team, the other A teams and the host's B team are allocated the first 26 spaces. The remaining 13 names are drawn out of a hat with the 6 getting confirmed spaces and remaining 7 going on the waiting list in a random order.

Qualification

To facilitate this being a one-day event, the qualification/ranking round is shot over a Bray I, i.e. 30 arrows at a 40cm target, from 18m, effectively half a WA18. The maximum score in the round is 900. This will be run as laid out in FITA rules with the exception of clothes restrictions. Clubs are strongly encouraged to wear matching club strip/colours. Ends are timed.

Elimination

The current rules have been in place since 2007.

The eliminations are run on Beiter 60mm hit-miss discs. Each head to head match will be decided over FOUR ends. Each end will consist of each member of the team shooting TWO arrows each - with THREE archers. The maximum score in a match is 24. Only one member of the team may be on the line at one time. There will be a 1 metre line behind the shooting line and all team members must be behind this while not shooting. The next archer must wait until the departing archer is over this 1 metre line before they step over it. In addition, no arrow may be fully out of an archers quiver while crossing the 1 metre line. Members of the team who are not shooting are fully allowed to communicate with the archer on the line and themselves.

There will be a time limit of TWO minutes for the team to shoot all SIX arrows. All archers must start behind the 1 metre line until the timing period starts, a 10 second warning will be indicated before the timing period starts, which will be indicated by a whistle.

The winning team goes through to the next round and the losing team is eliminated. In case of a tied score at the end of a match, each team will be given 1 minute to shoot 3 arrows (one each). If the tie-break also ends tied, it will be repeated until there is a winner.

If a team infringes these rules the official controlling the match will hold up a yellow card. This indicates that the current archer on the line must cross behind the 1 meter line before returning back to the shooting line, remembering that any arrow must be replaced into the quiver before doing so.

Judges will have the power to penalise teams in the manner described above.

Awards

Unlike traditional archery events where the award presentation is normally some time after shooting finishes, the prizes are awarded immediately after the last ends of shooting. From 2015, the BUTC trophy was renamed to be the Werner Beiter trophy.

This was originally written by Tim Mundon for the very first BUTC in 2003, but has been updated to reflect subsequent changes in BUTC.