UK Student Archery Association

TOUCAN cleared for take off [31/May/23]

Results from the BUTTS Outdoor Championships, held in Nottingham on 20th May, have now been published. Oxford were the winners, with hosts Nottingham in second place. BUTTS Outdoors is a freestanding event and doesn't count towards the BUTTS league standings.

BUTTS holds its AGM alongisde its Outdoor Champs and this year, there were a few significant changes agreed.

At the Outdoor Champs itself, Oxford ran out winners over Nottingham 2386 to 2300. The top 2 were well clear of Warwick in third and the rest of the field. Top scorers on the WA720 were Yang Pei (Oxford) on 634 and Max Harding (Nottingham) on 615, with Wills Chiu (Warwick) and Samuel Walby (Oxford) in the 590s. Top ladies were Ecaterina Pogorenii (Oxford) and Hannah Evans (Nottingham) on 586 and 581. 10 of BUTTS' 13 teams were present, although only 4 fielded complete teams as the novices shot a round down and were not included in the overall team scores. Oxford also won the novice team event fairly comfortably, with Warwick in second. As with the senior teams, the top two were well clear. Top gent and top lady novice were Bjarne Feddersen and Alana Halpin (both Oxford).

There was an All Unis record broken too. Rosemary Evans (Nottingham) shot 501 to break the ladies barebow 50m record - that was previously 469. Tia Mulholland (De Montfort) also beat the old record with 474.

Final tables for this season are available on the BUTTS 2022/23 page.

Changes are coming for BUTTS. The most important is that there will be promotion and relegation between the divisions 1 and 2. That will come in from 2024/25, with the exact format to be confirmed. Division 2 came into being across a few years in the mid 2010s after a glut of new clubs popped up in the Midlands. De Montfort, Northampton and Leicester were followed by Coventry and Lincoln, with a full 3 match campaign first appearing in 2018/19. The idea behind it was to help all the new clubs get used to hosting matches before being merged with the main BUTTS league. De Montfort (who comfortably won that division 2 title) did move up into the main division for 2019/20, but this wasn't a formal promotion. Since then, barring the interruption for Covid, Coventry, Leicester, Lincoln and Northampton have competed separately from the main BUTTS clubs. However, with overlapping geographies, overlapping standards and overlapping organisation, the current set up was no longer working satisfactorily.

The move to incorporate promotion and relegation is a step forward for BUTTS. To help share the organisational load, outgoing BUTTS league organiser Callum Henfrey (Oxford) will be succeeded by two people, Charlotte Chard (Nottingham) and Dan Lewis (Leicester), who will take responsibility for divisions 1 and 2 respectively.

Finally, the league itself is changing its name from BUTTS to TOUCAN. The original name of the Midlands-based league goes back to its creation in the 1995/96 season. BUTTS was the first regional league in England and Wales - and the only one for 7 entire seasons. The toucan bird has been a logo of the league for many years. TOUCAN stands for Toxophilites of Universities Central and Nearby.