ARCHERY Australia’s National and State Indoor Championship was the sole focus for Blue Lake Archers over the weekend, as 15 of the local archers participated in the championship.
The archers are divided into age, gender and equipment style divisions, with the local archers representing the club across 10 different divisions.
To decide the championship, various clubs throughout Australia offered venues to run the competition and all results were correlated electronically to decide both National and individual State championships.
Mount Gambier was one of the four venues in South Australia.
Approximately 730 archers from across the country competed over the weekend of July 8 and 9, the local club electing to offer its venue on Saturday.
The competition is decided on the combined scores an archer achieves from a Double Australian 18 metre as the first session and followed up by a World Archery 18 metre to complete the contest.
The final tally has a maximum possible score of 1200 points, all results are off-the-bow only, with no handicap score applied in the championships.
The state level finishing position are derived from the nation totals by filtering the archers into their individual state, effectively a two-for-one deal.
The event ran smoothly at the local venue, although it was a long day on the range for the archers – scoring commenced at 10am and the final end was recorded just before 4.20pm.
From the local club nine podium finishes were achieved at National and/or State level.
Dale Tschirpig in the Open Barebow Compound division had the best finishing position, second nationally and ranked first in South Australia.
Fiona Allison competed in the 50+ Female barebow Recurve division and was ranked third nationally and second in SA.
Seth and Blade Delaney are both in the Under 14 Male Compound division and were classified as first and second respectively at state level, Seth just missing the third step of the podium nationally by a slim six points.
Jeff Puckridge was ranked second at State level in the 50+ Male compound division.
BLA’s most prolific competitor, Ian Harris, rounded out the individual archer podium results with a second in SA for the 70+ Male compound division.
Team contests were also a part of the National Championships, where state-based teams compete against the other states, with the team contests spanning many different divisions.
The only local representative in a team was Seth Delaney in the ArcherySA Youth Compound team.
Teams in this section comprised four archers and their individual scores are combined to give a possible maximum of 4800 points.
The young SA-based archers had a combined total of 3262 points to secure second place behind the ArcheryNSW Youth Compound team on 3358 points.
Seth Delaney gained his second podium for the weekend as a result.
Indoor archery continues at the Blue Lake Gymnastics Club, Malseed Park, Friday at 7pm, followed by outdoor archery at Corriedale Park from 12.30pm Sunday.
Results for National and State placings, possible score 1200 points. (Results are provisional at the time of writing).
Under 14 Male Compound: Seth Delaney 952, National fourth, State first – (member of a team event, second Nationally); Blade Delaney 858, National sixth, State second.
Under 14 Male Recurve: Callum Oschar 146, National 12th, State fifth.
Open Female Compound: Tamika Mullan 1043, National 22nd, State fifth.
Open Male Compound: Ben Kilsby 1164, National 21st, State fifth; Matthew Delaney 1055, National 76th, State 13th; Alex McDonnell 1000, National 79th, State 14th.
Open Male Barebow Compound: Dale Tschirpig 745, National second, State first.
Open Male Barebow Recurve: Jerome Koopman 862, National 17th, State fourth.
50+ Female Barebow Recurve: Fiona Allison 784, National third, State second.
50+ Male Compound: Paul Freeman 1119, National 22nd, State seventh; Allan Oschar 439, National 40th, State 10th.
60+ Male Compound: Jeff Puckridge 1138, National fifth, State second; Garry Jacques 988, National 21st, State fifth.
70+ Male Compound: Ian Harris 1064, National ninth, State second.
Team event, Youth Compound, possible score 4800 points: First – ArcheryNSW Youth Compound Team 3358; second – AcherySA Youth Compound Team 3262 (Seth Delaney, Amy Ramke, Harry Knox and Seton O’Donherty); third – ArcheryWA Youth Compound Team 3031.
