UK Student Archery Association

Let's get Regional [16/Oct/15]

Important Correction [20/Oct/15]

The Indoor proposal is past the consultation phase and regulations are being finalised. However nothing is official to it definitely happening. If the current plan comes in to effect, then the event in 2017 will be 2 regions - North and South - the highest individual scorers from each category over both Regional events would progress to the final. The finals event would use a FITA 18 and involve a H2H element. See the Indoor Archery proposal doc [Word]. The 12 BUCS regions mentioned on their website are more of an organisational thing.

Part of UKSAA's mission is to disseminate information within the UK's university archery community. Occasionally that goes a little bit wrong and it ends up disseminating confusion, so apologies to anyone who was misled. The original article text is included below.

*****

There is a proposal for a bit of a shake up to the way BUCS Indoors is run, with regional qualifiers leading to a (smaller) national finals event from 2017, see BUCS website's Indoor Champs page. ~~Feedback on this is still welcome, please do let BUCS and the SAG know your thoughts.~~ With increasing numbers being turned away, even from a hall the size of Telford, such kind of change was always on the cards.

Could regional qualifiers be regarded as a stepping stone for BUCS to take over running the Regional Leagues? That's pure speculation but it's early season and there are no match results to report yet, so let's indulge ourselves.

BUCS actually has 12 regions/nations (hereafter, just 'regions') that cover the UK, so what might BUCS archery regions look like? Moving from 5 leagues to 12 would mainly involved splitting, although SSS would remain unchanged. Ulster have historically shot with the Irish IVL and would appear to be on their own in this system. NEUAL would be split in to three, exactly along the lines of their new "Conferences" being implemented in 2015/16 - ahead of their time perhaps? Chester would be added to the North West. Further south however, the picture is much more fractured.

SWWU would be split in two, along English and Welsh lines, with Bangor added to Wales region. Most of BUTTS would be unevenly split between East Midlands (9 clubs, including the 4 newbies) and West Midlands (just Birmingham and Warwick). Most of SEAL would be split in to three: London, South-East (which excludes London) and East. There are two exceptions, Cambridge (East rather than East Midlands) and Southampton (South West rather than South East).

Region	No.	Teams
Scotland	7 (8)	Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, Napier, St Andrews, Strathclyde, (West of Scotland)
Wales	4	Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff, Swansea
Northern Ireland	1	Ulster
East	3	Cambridge, East Anglia, Essex
East Midlands	9	De Montfort, Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Loughborough, Northampton, Nottingham, Nottingham Trent, Oxford
London	4 (6)	Brunel, (East London), Imperial, London, Queen Mary, (Royal Holloway)
North West	7	Central Lancashire, Chester, Keele, Lancaster, Liverpool, MMU Cheshire, Salford
North East	4	Durham, Newcastle, Sunderland, Teesside
South East	5 (6)	(Chichester), Kent, Portsmouth, Reading, Surrey, Sussex
South West	5	Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, Southampton
West Midlands	2	Birmingham, Warwick
Yorkshire	7	Bradford, Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds, Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam, York

You can see the full breakdown on the BUCS website's Regions and Nations page. On last season's evidence, the 12 league winners would have been the actual five winners from last season (Edinburgh, London, Lancaster, Bath and Warwick) plus Swansea, Ulster, Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Reading, and Bradford. Hypothetical congratulations to those seven.