UK Student Archery Association

Catching up with SSS [19/Jan/26]

Hopefully before the new year gets too much older, a catch up on some regional matches from the old year, starting in Scotland, because SSS is already three matches deep.

The Scottish league opener (held 8th Nov) was won by Edinburgh, and by a margin of nearly 100 points. Edinburgh notched 2186, thanks to a really solid team effort with scores from 556 to 533. Dundee were second on 2088, although they did have the top 2 scorers in the match. St Andrews were the third and final team over 2000, with 2029. Heriot-Watt's 1998 saw them fourth. This was Edinburgh's first senior SSS match win post Covid. Their last win was in November 2019. This match also saw the return of Stirling. Stirling made their SSS debuts in 2023/24, but did not contest any SSS matches in 24/25. There was also a solo recurve from Glasgow. Glasgow last fielded archers in 2019/20.

In match 2, held just a week after match 1 (15th Nov), scores in general took a dip. Dundee won the match despite scoring 1998 - the exact same score Heriot-Watt had finished fourth with just 7 days previously. HW themselves scooped second place with 1989, whilst Strathclyde and St Andrews were third and fourth on 1946 and 1921. Unfortunately for Edinburgh, the follow up to their first outright match win in 6 years was transport trouble which caused a DNS.

SSS match 3 (held 29th Nov) used a Vegas 300 round. In this fixture Dundee and St Andrews broke well clear of the field, with Dundee taking the win on 872. St Andrews amassed 849. The battle for third was extremely close, with Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh split by a single point, 790 against 789, with Heriot-Watt picking up third spot.

Misha Pavlov (Dundee) top scored in all three matches, with a 580, a 583 and 280 on the Vegas. In match 1, no other archers broke 560, although barebow William Anderson (Dundee) was just 1 point under. Two of Edinburgh's archers were in the 550s. In match 2, Grant McLellan (Strathclyde) hit a 570 in his side's third place tally. In match 3, Pavlov's closest rival was again his clubmate and barebow Anderson, who scored 256.

A second and two firsts put Dundee on top of the pile with 44 out of a possible 45 points. Finishes of 2nd, 3rd and 4th (not in that order) mean that St Andrews and Heriot-Watt are in second and third place, both teams with 39. Strathclyde have 35. With two matches remaining, Dundee are in pole position to win SSS for what would be the fourth season in a row.

Heriot-Watt have won all 3 of the SSS novice league fixtures fairly comfortably, winning match 1 by over 100 and match 2 by over 200. Derek Warwick (Heriot-Watt) has been the top individual in all three with 467, 463 and 216 on the Vegas. Abdalrahman Al-zandi (Heriot-Watt) was only a point behind in mtahc 2 with 462. In the novice table, Heriot-Watt have 45 points, whilst consecutive runners up spots in matches 2 and 3 have lifted Strathclyde to second on 40. St Andrews have 38.

SSS resumes on 24th January, with all clubs heading to Heriot-Watt. See SSS 2025/26 page.