UK Student Archery Association

How was 2008 for you? [12/Jan/09]

Major tournament hosts in 2008 were York (BUSA Indoors), Durham (BUTC) and Bangor (BUSA Outdoors at Lilleshall). According to (admittedly incomplete) records Bangor are the first Welsh uni to host a national tournament and soon Swansea will be the first to host a national tournament in Wales itself with BUTC 2009. Swansea will host BUTC 09 on Sat 28th Feb. Loughborough will host BUCS Indoors 09 a week later on Sat 7th Mar.

Edinburgh completed a clean sweep of triumphs in '08 - remarkable because of the close attentions of Warwick who took a clean silver sweep. Warwick were also ELeague runners up to, inevitably, Edinburgh and broke (their own) record for the highest score not to win BUSA Indoors. Warwick were unquestionably the leading English club but behind the leading duo, Surrey, Nottingham, Cambridge and Imperial picked up third places. From 2008/09 BUSA has become BUCS. One can but hope that the first BUCS Outdoor championships isn't another 12 hour slog through a downpour.

In the leagues Warwick swept all before them to win BUTTS 07/08 without dropping a single point, with a 2290 and an average well over 2250. NEUAL 07/08 produced an astonishingly tight race - at the NEUAL Indoor Champs the top five teams finished within 50 points of each other, whilst the overall NEUAL novice league needed aggregate to split the top three teams. Sheffield cam out on top in both. In SWWU Bath edged out Swansea after BUSA Outdoors scores counted as the final match. Surrey won SEAL, although the campaign was blighted by no shows and matches not held. Surrey joined Loughborough in gaining promotion to ELeague's top division. Edinburgh's seniors extended their SUS winning streak to six years and 30 matches. Napier pinched the SUS Novice League title and were also promoted to ELeague Novice Division 1 but after the demolition of their Sports Centre now look set to move to their fourth "permanent" indoor venue in five years. UC Dublin won the IIVL ending Dublin IT's four year reign. In 08/09, Kent, Essex and Huddersfield joined leagues for the first time, with Kent making a particularly good start to life in SEAL.

The calendar year brought 17,656 visits according to the webstat counter, smashing the previous high of just over 15,000 from 2005. In 2009 a major redevelopment of the site (behind the scenes) is planned - it shouldn't make too much of a difference outwardly, but it should bring the site's coding out of the 90s.