BLUE Lake Archers (BLA) held its 13th annual invitational tournament over the weekend.
With clubs from far and wide making the trip to be involved, South East archers showcased their skill as they recorded some solid results against both city and interstate competitors.
Having evolved from the initial single competition, the tournament now consists of three separate events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Saturday’s outdoor event remains the club’s official tournament, but many visiting archers now take the opportunity to partake in the full weekend of archery.
The weekend attracted archers from various Adelaide and Victorian clubs, with Adelaide Archery Club (AAC), Eden Field Archers (EFA), the Farm Indoor Archery Club (FIAC), Greater Hamilton Archers (GHA) and Southern Vales Archery Club (SVAC) all represented.
With archers separated into divisions based on equipment type, age and gender, the total of 18 divisions indicated the diversity of the sport.
BLA president and newly appointed Archery South Australia (ASA) state vice president Ian Harris opened the weekend of events Friday night at the indoor venue.
New ASA state president Ian Dall took the opportunity to join his deputy for the weekend, competing over the weekend.
The indoor archery event was run as a qualifying and ranking event (QRE) in which archers scores are counted toward state and national rankings and team selection at those levels.
National judges Graham Lock and Glenn Martin were in charge of conducting the events, assisted by trainee judge Louise Abbott.
The QRE indoor was well supported with a field of 18 archers lining up at the St Martins College Hall indoor archery venue for a world archery 18-metre event – a 60 arrow event on 40cm target faces.
Regular international competitor Niamh Jones from GHA submitted the highest score for the night with 552 from a possible 600 points.
Blue Lake archer Ben Kilsby was involved in a nailbiting contest with Brendan Jones (GHA) for the open male compound division, but Jones made a brilliant last end effort to overtake Kilsby by a single point.
In the veteran male compound division Harris, Garry Jacques (BLA) and Bruce Lang (EFA) were also involved in a tight tussle.
Lang and Harris finished the night with identical scores of 528, with the win going to Harris in the tie-break countback.
A total of 28 archers took to the Corriedale Park archery range Saturday afternoon.
All four basic archery equipment groups were represented, from the traditional wooden longbows, the Olympic style recurve bows and the high technology compound bows and crossbows.
For Saturday’s outdoor tournament the weather conditions were quite reasonable for most of the day, with a late shower failing to dampen archers’ enthusiasm.
A Sydney round is used at the tournament for most of the divisions attending the competition, which is a 120-arrow event over 70, 60, 50 and 40 metres on the 122cm target face.
The longbow and crossbow divisions competed in a Short Sydney over 60, 50, 40 and 30 metres, but while the longbow archers still have the 122cm target face the crossbow archers used the smaller 60cm face.
From the local club Peter Austin backed up his 2017 win to pick up the gold medal in the veteran male compound bow division with Garry Jacques filling the bronze medal position.
Liam Stevens picked up a gold medal in the Under 20 male compound and Len Bayley added a gold medal to his trophy cabinet in the Veteran+ compound division.
The local achievements continued with Ben Kilsby and David Cross gaining a silver and bronze respectively in the competitive open male compound division and Paul Freeman claimed bronze in the master male compound division.
A strong interest in the highest score for the day normally centres around the open male compound bow division and this year continued the trend.
Hamilton’s Brendan Jones backed up last year’s win as he won the class with the highest score of 1111 points from a possible 1200.
Kilsby and Cross chased Jones hard until the finish, scoring 1107 and 1102 respectively.
The leading female compound bow archer Niamh Jones (GHA) pushed the men all day as she finished with a solid 1101.
The weekend wound up Sunday morning with the now traditional long range Clout archery round at Corriedale Park.
The event was well supported with 11 archers competing, spread over distances of 125,145, 165 or 180 metres depending on divisions.
Reasonable conditions resulted in good scores recorded including a possible state record.
Brendan Jones rounded out his highly successful cross-border raid gaining the best score of the day with 330 points from a possible 360, with his tally including two all-gold ends from the 180-metre line.
Retired state president Bruce Lang (EFA) competed in the barebow recurve division and his score of 272 is being submitted as a possible new state record for his division.
Blue Lake archery returns to normal club events Sunday afternoon with an outdoor round at Corriedale Park starting at 12.30pm.
