UK Student Archery Association

SUS scores and the return to BUTC [13/Feb/11]

As Napier and Edinburgh gear up to host BUTC 2011 - more about the reason for the co-hosting below - there is one change to the list of teams previously announced. Leeds have withdrawn and their slot has been taken by Birmingham B who were top of the waiting list. If for any reason your club will no longer be able to compete at BUTC, please notify Ewan Gunn (Napier) immediately, see BUTC tournament info.

Could each team please be sure to fill in a Competitor Questionnaire and hand it in at registration or directly to the commentators. Failure to do so, will give commentators, now confirmed as Stewart Barclay [hello!] and Matt Nowicki licence to make things up. Andrew Phillips will head up the team of judges again, with Alex Lamb, David Lange and Michael Ward.

The number of Scottish clubs competing at BUTC 2011 is the highest since the very first BUTC with Aberdeen and Heriot-Watt making their first visit since that day in 2003. Strathclyde will be one of five sides making their BUTC debut this year alongside East Anglia, Northumbria, Sunderland and UCL.

Also, just to confirm, the knock-out matches will not be changing to a sets format this year. As since 2007, three archers shoot four ends of two arrows at those 60mm discs and total number of discs hit will decide the winners.

Leading up to BUTC, co-hosts Edinburgh and Napier enjoyed contrasting fortunes on SUS League Match duty, see the latest SUS results and tables.

On Sat 30th Jan, Edinburgh's SUS strength squad ran up an imposing total of 2252, driven by Migle Petruskeviciute's score of 581. Novice Douglas Jardine (Edinburgh) scored 558, missing out on the All Unis record by only 2 points. In fact Edinburgh's novice team total of 1629 was only 9 short of that All Unis record. Elsewhere in this match, Aberdeen were second with 2020 points, clear of Strathclyde's 1929. Jamie Paton (Strathclyde) however was top gent in the match with 559.

The next SUS fixture on Sat 5th Feb was between Heriot-Watt, Strathclyde and venueless Napier. Heriot-Watt did allow Napier to attend their own practice session immediately prior to the league match. However, ten weeks with no practice took its toll on Napier as they slid to third in the match on 1937, 30 behind Strathclyde, for whom Jamie Paton top scored in the match on 558. Heriot-Watt won the match on exactly 2000 and won the novice match on 1305 too. There was some joy for Napier as they picked up second place here.

Napier had been assured they would be allowed to use brand new facilities built by their university but that practice time would be cut from 5 to 2 hours per week - additional hall hire (of university owned facilities) would cost a prohibitive Ł80 per hour.

However in January, when the club came to physically move in, they were informed that archery would simply not be permitted in the hall at all. Since club's budget had been largely used up from hall hire before Christmas, they were left homeless and broke. This also forced the postponement of yet another SUS League Match and new hosts requried for SUS Indoors. It also triggered a rapidly organised BUTC co-hosting arrangement with Edinburgh.

Some readers may already be aware that I am quite closely involved with NUAC and I do not want to write anything here that might jeopardise the club's relationship with their university, but it is difficult not to be angry about the way the club has been treated. No Napier sports clubs will receive funding next academic year. NUAC will have to pay for an external hall to hire from membership and sponsorship income, whilst university owned facilities remain available.

In the last few days, there has been some good news as funding has been found to get Napier through the last few weeks of the indoor season, back in the bowels of Meadowbank Stadium.