UK Student Archery Association

Archery a winner in BUSA points revamp [15/Sep/06]

The number of BUSA points available for all sports has gone up see BUSA Mailout #3, 15th August. Archery has gone up from 91 points to 604 points, a factor of 6.64, the greatest increase of any sport, making archery about 2.5 times more valuable in real terms. Make sure you tell your Sports Union ASAP to try to secure more money/practice time. The other big winners were judo, rowing, taekwondo and boxing. The increase improves archery's "position" up from to 29th/46 sports to 21st/49 and is belated recognition for the explosion in university archery that has taken place over the last 5 years in particular. Football with 5886 points is now top of the pile, narrowly ahead of hockey on 5860 and rugby union on 5647.

Under the old system 1st Gents/Ladies Recurve/Compound Experienced would receive 3 points for their institution, 2nd place in these four categories gets 2 points and 3rd place 1 point. In the team event, the leading mixed team of four recurve got 10 points, 2nd place 7 points and 3rd place 5 points. This brings a total of 46 points for the event, which doubled gives 92. (Archery is listed as "having" 91 points since there were only 2 ladies compounds at BUSA doors this year, so 1 point was unawarded, however 604/92 = 6.57.)

Under the new system individual champions get 12 points (rather than 3), with second place 8 points, 3rd place 6 points and 4th place 4 points. However it is no longer just recurves and compounds, but barebow and longbow too with points for the top 4 archers. Mixed team recurve instead of being 10/7/5 is now 20/14/10/6/5/3/2/1 - a BUSA point is now available to the team finishing 8th.

Is the new system welcome? Well archery is the biggest winner, so yes of course it is - the fact that archery is, relatively, now 2.5 times more valuable in terms of BUSA points should be a useful bargaining chip with Sports Unions around the country.

There are some concerns. Novices competitions still receive no points. Also, barebow, longbow and compound all have the same weighting as recurve despite the huge imbalance in the numbers involved - it is much easier to come 4th when there are 4 competitors as against 200. Perhaps it would have been more sensible to leave these three disciplines at 3/2/1 points for the top three. Overall however the increase in value for archery is excellent news ahead of what promises to be an exciting season.