UK Student Archery Association

It's E-League time [27/Oct/20]

BUCS EMG are running the E-League again this season. It is open to all clubs and hopefully all clubs and/or individuals who can take part, will take part. The E-League is probably the best suited of the national competitions to run during a pandemic but whilst the overall 5 round structure remains the same, there are a few Covid-related tweaks:

Score submission deadlines now on 7th of the following month
Individual entries now also allowed (as well as through a club co-ordinator) via the E-League website
Half Portsmouth E-League in operation in parallel (intended for 2020/21 only)

The full rules are on the E-League website archeryeleague.wordpress.com itself. Upcoming E-League dates for your diary are as follows:

Tue 27th Oct: Score submission form available
Sat 31th Oct: Last day to shoot scores for Round 1
Sun 1st Nov: First day to shoot scores for Round 2
Sat 7th Nov: Round 1 score submission deadline
Sat 14th Nov: approx date for Round 1 results published

In 2019/20, BUCS EMG successfully rebooted a competition that looked in danger of collapse. All clubs' A teams will go in one big division again. The reformat helped no less than a dozen clubs set absolute all-time bests last year. It also means that it is no longer a five year slog - longer than a typical undergraduate degree - to wrest the crown.

In each round, the top 15 teams get points (15 for 1st, 14 for 2nd... 0 for 16th and below) and at the end of the 5 round season, most points wins. Last E-League season was abbreviated by the lockdown, with the March round being cancelled. Warwick took the overall title, ahead of Birmingham in second and Oxford in third.

Large chunks of the 2020/21 regional league calendar are likely to adopt a similar format. SSS has already confirmed a 5 match postal calendar. SWWU's first fixture will be a postal too.

The spreadsheet with all the E-League's Individual Monthly Winners has also been updated, see E-League section of this site. Gents recurve champion in 2019/20 was William Pike (Warwick) whose 4 (inc. 1 shared) monthly wins took him to 6 overall, joint third in the all time gents recurve table. Pike, George Harding (Nottingham) and Matthew Sharpe (Surrey) all have 6, just behind Robert Gray (Nottingham Trent) with 7 and Rhodri Curnow (Swansea) who won 8 rounds between 2007 and 2012.

On the ladies side, Eleanor Piper (Birmingham) won 3 rounds this season to take her tally up to 8, putting her clear in third place all time. She is behind team-mate Rebekah Tipping with 10 (5 each for Aberdeen and Birmingham). Both trail behind Jenny Jeppsson (Edinburgh) with 20 - the most of any individual in a single category. Sarah Allaway (Warwick) became the fourth recurve and first lady recurve to achieve the unusual feat of winning the overall E-League title without winning an individual round. Allaway never finished lower than 4th in any individual month last season.

Joanna Clapka (De Montfort) and Timothy Jackson (Warwick) won the compound titles also without winning an individual round, although this has been done before in those disciplines. Tia Mulholland and Chris Norwood (both De Montfort) were top barebows, with Georgie Jones (Loughborough) and Stuart MacFarquhar (Southampton) top longbows.

Kai Thomas-Prause (Warwick) won 3 gents compound rounds last season, bringing his total to 6. He becomes the individual with the highest number of individual round wins without having won an overall E-League title. This might change depending on the missing results of the 2018/19 campaign. This record was previously held by compound Phil Glover (Loughborough) and barebow Joscelyn Sarsby (Birmingham) with 5 round wins each.

The most successful individual E-Leaguer of all time is Emily Williams (South Wales). Williams picked up an astonishing 35 round wins - 7 in compound, 10 in barebow and 18 in longbow. She won 8 overall titles, including a compound, barebow and longbow hat-trick in an extraordinary 2013/14 campaign.