UK Student Archery Association

Discs roll to Reading [15/Jan/19]

As previously announced, BUTC 2019 will be hosted by Reading, aka Knights' Archers. The date of the event is confirmed as Sunday 31st March.

Entry to the competition is in two parts, both of which must be completed by the relevant deadline. Each club must buy a 'BUTC Entry' product from the Knights' Archers page on the Reading University Student Union website. Each club must also email a completed copy of the entry form to Reading University Archery Club. The final closing date for entries is 13:00 on Friday 8th March. In order to be eligible for the B team draw, entry must be received by 13:00 on Friday 22nd February. The entry form is available from the Tournament Info page.

A reminder that the BUCS entry deadline is looming on Thursday 17th January.

As previously noted, the BUTC organising team would like to thank Reading and their President Emma Brand for their response to the emergency appeal for hosts issued on 4th December. This is the first time that no bids to host BUTC were received by the initial deadline. For a competition run by volunteers like BUTC, the equation is brutally simple - no hosts mean no event.

BUTC returns to SEAL for the third time (in fact the third time in six years) following Southampton (2014) and East Anglia (2015). This will be the first national student archery competition to come to the town.

Reading have been BUTC regulars since first attending in 2010. In fact their debut in the discs is still their defining BUTC moment. A team of Julie Chenery, Tom Castle and Graeme Anderson qualified reasonably well, landing in 13th spot. From there, the Knights cut through the field, beating Kent, then 4th seeds Imperial A before disposing of Imperial B in the QFs. They eventually came unstuck in the semi-finals, going out to eventual winners Edinburgh, before finished 4th. Reading were the last club to make the semis on debut.

Subsequently, the discs showed Reading their other side. Reading qualified 7th (2011) and 10th (2012) but on both occasions they suffered narrow first round defeats (by 1 disc and in a shoot-off). They were the top seeded team to be eliminated on each occasion and the 2011 defeat is the third highest seeding upset ever recorded. Reading's most recent trip to the last 16/round 2 came in 2016 when they ousted Birmingham B after a triple shoot off.

Defending BUTC champions are Birmingham who beat Loughborough in an epic final last year. The regulation match ended 15-15 with Birmingham winning 1-0 in the first ever BUTC final shoot off.