UK Student Archery Association

SUS Head to Head success [20/Feb/07]

David Lange (Edinburgh) and Nathalie Gough (Aberdeen) beat Aspen Davidoff (Edinburgh) and Gerrard Brown (St Andrews) in the first ever SUS H2H Event held in front of a boisterous crowd in Dundee. There was some joy for the home fans as Michael Harrison (Dundee) in partnership with Richard Townsend (Edinburgh) picked up third place, beating Iain Hogg (Strathclyde) and Milos Rydval (St Andrews) in the 3rd/4th play off. Top qualifier was Jenny Jeppsson (Edinburgh) with 572, the day before she won silver in the nationals, see below.

Having decided that a head-to-head competition within SUS would be a little one-sided if drawn along traditional university team lines, SUS organiser Steve Wicks drew inspiration from a nearby open competition. After a qualifying Portsmouth, the competitors were ranked and 1st place paired with 32nd, 2nd/31st all the way down to 16th/17th. The pairs were then ranked on their combined score and seeded for the first round. Knockout matches were shot on a Portsmouth face and both team members shot a dozen arrows each. The pairs and rankings were calculated from the scores extracted at the half-way point of the Portsmouth.

Most matches were evenly contested and there was a considerable degree of unpredictability, although even with a handicapping system it was noticeable that an Edinburgh senior was in each of the certificate winning pairs.

The previous weekend Dundee were also the hosts to a SUS League Match against St Andrews and Strathclyde. Laura Vallius and Eilidh Marshall dragged Dundee to a three point winning margin over St Andrews, a hundred ahead of Strathclyde. Dundee now lead the SUS table albeit temporarily.

In other head to head news involving SUS (amongst others) archers, the National Champs were last weekend too. Jenny Jeppsson (Edinburgh) qualified in first place, seeing off rather fiercer competition from Naomi Folkard and Alison Williamson, with a 564 on a FITA 18. Emma Downie (Edinburgh) qualified 8th on 547 and eventually lost to Jeppsson 110-108 in the quarter-finals. Jenny eventually went on to lose to Naomi Folkard in the final and claim the silver.

Elsewhere in gents compound, Phil Glover (Loughborough) shot 578 to qualify 9th, Tim Nash (London) 572 for a tie of 18th, Andy Ward (Edinburgh) 567 for 26th. Glover beat Richard Wilkins in R32 before losing in the last 16 to the eventual runner up. Nash and Ward lost at the R32 stage, Ward unlucky in a 117-116 defeat. In gents recurve Colin Geenes (Coventry) qualified 17th with 553 and beat a certain Ian McGibbon in R32 before losing to top qualifier Alan Wills. Andy Ward qualified 22nd but won his first two matches to make his way to the QFs before losing to Simon Needham. Alexander Lamb and David Lange (both Edinburgh) were just inside the knock-out cut - Andy O'Connor (Keele) and Ric Whalley (Cambridge) both just missed out.

Edinburgh won the team category by over 70 points with 2197 and a team comprising Jenny Jeppsson 564, Emma Downie 547, Andy Ward (recurve this time) 545, Alex Lamb 541 - all on FITA 18s, installing themselves as massive favourites for BUSA Indoors and BUTC. There were, as I have almost come to expect, a lot of recent ex-students too numerous to mention individually, who performed excellently at these championships.