UK Student Archery Association

World Uni Games 2025 review [31/Jul/25]

The 32nd Summer World University Games were held in the Rhine/Ruhr region of Germany in July, with archery events taking place in Essen. No British student archers went to to the 2023 edition (held in China) and the 2021 event was cancelled due to Covid, so this was the first such a team for 6 years.

The British team comprised three recurves, Callum Piggott (Coventry), Louisa Piper (Nottingham) and Megan Costall (Birmingham) plus five compounds, Finlay Clark (Hull), Ajay Scott (Kent), Grace Chappell (Arts Bournemouth), Chloe A'Bear (Gloucestershire) and Hallie Boulton (Central Lancs).

The format of the event is a ranking 720, followed by all the various team and individual head to heads.

In the ranking round, Ajay Scott stormed to 4th place overall in the field, with 704 - only 3 points off top spot and breaking the existing All Unis record of 698, shot by Kai Thomas-Prause (Warwick) who shot two 698s , including one at this event in 2019. Finlay Clark scored 692 and was 19th out of 64. All three British compound women shot virtually identical scores with Hallie Boulton, Chloe A'Bear and Grace Chappell on 676, 675 and 674, placing 18th, 19th and 20th out of 51 as a result. Callum Piggott scored 627 to place 44th out of 86, with Megan Costall 36th and Lousia Piper in 57th in a ladies recurve field of 80.

From fourth place, Ajay Scott had a bye to the round of 32, where he won 145-144 - although he had been 3 clear with the last end to play. In the round of 16, things were even closer. Scott and his French opponent shared a 147-147 draw, with no end below a 29. Even in the shoot, both men shot 10s, with Scott's the closer and sending him through to the QFs. Scott won the next round 148-146, scoring 90 with his first 9 arrows to create a 4 point lead. In the semi-final Scott won 148-145 against Przemyslaw Konecki of Poland who would go on to win bronze. Scott took on Rajesh Jadhav Sahil of India in the gents final. The pair shot almost identical scores throughout - but a 30-29 margin in set 2 was enough to give the Indian archer the gold. Nevertheless Scott's silver represents a huge success for the British team. Scott's QF, SF and F scores - all of 148 - tie the existing All Unis record.

Elsewhere Finlay Clark had to start the "round of 48", winning 145-142, before scoring the better 10 in a 144-144 tie in the round of 32. Clark won again with 146-142 in the round of 16 before losing by exactly the same margin to Rajesh Jadhav Sahil - who would ultimately beat Ajay Scott in the final. In women's compound Grace Chappell and Chloe A'Bear both won their round of 48 matches before both losing (142-145 and 143-145) to higher ranked American women. A'Bear had been level with one end to go. Hallie Boulton won her first round fixture with a score of 149 - breaking the All Unis record and only dropping a single point in the last end when the match was very much already over as a contest. Boulton won again in the next round 146-141, before going down 143-145 in the round of 16 to the second seeded Korean Yerin Park who eventually won bronze.

In the recurve head to heads, Callum Piggott won his first round match 7-1. In the round of 64 he went from 3-1 to 3-5 down, but won the last end to force a shoot-off, which he won 10-9. In the round of 32, Piggott won the first end, but then his 12st seeded opponent won the next 3, all by a single point. In the ladies recurve Megan Costall outscored her opponent by a full 10 points but the match itself went to a tie breaker which she lost on a measurement. Louisa Piper won the third pass of her first round match but slipped out 6-2 in the first KO round.

Because of the numbers of archers in each category, UK teams were only present in the mixed recurve, mixed compound and ladies compound divisions. In the mixed compound event, Ajay Scott and Hallie Boulton were seeded 4th and got a bye in the first round. In the round of 16, they won all 4 passes individually to ease past Israel 154-148 and dropped only 2 points in an impressive 158-154 win over Turkey. In the semis, the came up against South Korea. Although the Brits actually emerged 40-39 ahead after the first, the Koreans cleaned the rest of the round for a 159-155 win. The UK team went up against Taiwan for the third and the two teams produced ends of 36 each, then 39 each then 38 each. Finally, in the last end, Scott and Boulton shot a maximum to claim the bronze medals. The women's compound team was also seeded fourth and beat Taiwan 230-229 in the QFs before being outgunned 238-227 by South Korea. In the bronze medal match, India ran out winners 232-224. Out of the 24 teams to make the mixed recurve team cut, the UK team of Megan Costall and Callum Piggott were seeded 18th. In the first round they ousted 15th seeds Azerbaijan in an impressive 6-0. However, they ran into the USA, seeded second and were then whitewashed themselves.

The UK's last medals at this level were at the 2014 World University Archery Championships that took place in Poland, so the trip to Germany was a very fruitful one, with a 2nd, a 3rd and a 4th place recorded, plus numerous other match wins. Congratulations to all those who took part, including coach David Morris. The next Summer World University Games are scheduled to be in 2027 in North Carolina.