UK Student Archery Association

BUTC 2024 gets a host and date [04/Mar/24]

Normally, by this point in the calendar, BUTC is physically happening. This season, it's taken a while, but organisers can announce a confirmed host club and date for what will be the 20th running of BUTC. The discs will fly in Sheffield on Saturday 20th April. Full details, including the entry form, will appear on the BUTC Tournament Info page in due course.

Organisers recognise the date is not ideal as it will fall in most universities' Easter holidays, but it has been driven by necessity. It should avoid most universities' exam times. Organisers would like to thank Sheffield for putting themselves forward as an option and would similarly like to thank several others including Kent, Worcester, St Andrews and particularly Lincoln.

The initial request for bids to host was met with exactly zero responses. Whilst a host for BUTC 2024 has been secured, this has become the norm in recent years and it puts the event's future in real jeopardy. The hall that Sheffield will be using can only fit 12 bosses, rather than the traditional 16. As time passed and other options evaporated, organisers have worked out a way to tweak the competition, such that the basic format of the event (32 teams on a Bray I, followed by H2H elimination) should - hopefully - be retained. If hosting the competition in a 12 boss hall proves a success, it is hoped that this will increase the number of potential BUTC hosts and therefore help to avoid the extended shenanigans in future years.

Sheffield have never previously hosted BUTC, but they were hosts in the first year that BUCS Indoor Regional Qualifiers were brought in, hosting the Northern Qualifier in 2017. They also hosted the standalone BUCS (or equivalent) Indoor Champs in 2010 and 1996. Sheffield will aim to be the first home winners of BUTC since Birmingham in 2018.

Sheffield's BUTC highlights have come in recent years. They returned to the competition after a decade away in 2022 - and did so with an almighty bang. Having qualified 7th, they ousted 2nd seeds Loughborough and 3rd seeds Nottingham on the way to the final, before coming agonisingly close to the title, in a 13-12 defeat to Warwick. They followed it up at BUTC 2023 by qualifying second, but were outgunned by Oxford in the semis. They did gain an element of revenge for their previous final defeat, by beating Warwick 14-13 for bronze and becoming only the 8th club to have medalled at consecutive BUTCs. In both '22 and '23 Sheffield's trio was Kian Eshraghi-Yazdi, Sum Hin Moses Cheung and Jack Wells.