A PAIR of indoor archery rounds were a prelude to Sunday’s special Blue Lake Archers outdoor event – the Allan Pendrey Memorial – and also the state outdoor archery titles in Adelaide.
Friday night’s indoor was billed as a double round of Archery Australia 18-metre rounds and attracted five archers.
Round 1 was the final qualifying event for Paul Freeman to gain his indoor handicap rating.
On recent form, Len Bayley was the man to beat and he made his presence felt in both rounds.
The first round proved a turn around where one of the established archers gave Bayley a run for his money.
Graham Lock put in his best score for some time and managed to outdo Bayley by four points in the final adjusted tally.
Bayley turned up the heat in Round 2 and found an extra nine points off-the-bow while Lock slid backwards slightly.
The Round 2 results recorded Bayley as the winner, gaining a 10-point margin over Lock.
Brilliant sunshine Sunday in both Adelaide and locally was very welcome and made the day in the field a pleasant experience at both venues.
The state outdoor championship was held at the state archery grounds in the Adelaide hills town of Mylor, with Ben Kilsby BLA’s sole representative.
Kilsby was in the highly competitive Open Male compound bow division and was competing in what is arguably the toughest round in the World Archery book, the 144 arrow WA 90/1440 round.
Kilsby achieved a podium finish, claiming third in the division, a slim three points behind second place.
Locally, Sunday’s round was a tribute to the late Allan Pendrey and the archer with the best handicap adjusted score for the day would have their name added to the memorial shield.
A field of six presented at the shooting line for an Adelaide round of 120 arrows.
The archers found the sunny day was tempered by a right to left crosswind that failed to diminish during the afternoon.
The event tested the archers with four distances of 60, 50, 40 and 30 metres and was the longest duration round for many months.
The final tally was a close result, with only 16 points covering the top three places.
Len Bayley had put his new bow to good use and kept Paul Freeman at bay by eight points, while last year’s winner Lock finishing a further eight points behind Freeman.
