SWWU vs. the world (of British university archery)
BUCS qualifiers. It’s the crescendo of the indoor season for many university archers. For UoB members it’s just Saturday, and, in a quirk of SWWU (and some other UKSAA leagues), also a SWWU event. As the cars and coaches pulled up outside the Coombe Dingle Sports Complex, the minds of the competitors were doubtless racing. Plymouth were just relieved to be there, having narrowly avoided a repeat of the 2023 Disaster. Everyone else was probably wondering “why on Earth would they name a sports complex that?”
My taking well over a month to get round to writing this is not a reflection of how SWWU performed at BUCS, which is to say you did exceptionally well. Considering this, I’m going to include both the SWWU and overall rankings in the run-down of results. Róisín Mooney took a commanding win in the experienced female recurve category, a 578 that earned her 3rd place in the combined results of all three regional qualifiers. On the men's side, Dan Clarke continued his recent run of strong competition performances, shooting an astounding 577, comfortably 1st in SWWU and 4th overall. In tandem with the experienced categories, the novice recurve wins were taken by Bristol and Bath archers. Magdalena Kazmierczak comfortably won female novice recurve with a score of 532 which placed her 26th overall, in the mix with experienced archers. Bath’s Kyumin Lee took the win on the men’s side, his 518 placing him 74th overall.
Marilyn Wong and Joe Maskell took a short break from dominating the barebow categories in SWWU, to dominate the rest of student archery as well. Both scored 543 points, Marilyn matching last year’s score in spite of a significantly lower training volume. UWE’s Adam Selman putting in a shift to take 2nd (and overall 3rd) with a score of 524. Bristol’s Lucas Geertman and UWE’s Sofiia Shargorodskaia won the novice categories. Over on the ol’ stick and string, El Green and Sean Hughes took first place, both for Plymouth.
Our closest category was male exp compound, with the top three archers, led by Cardiff’s Oliver Coupe, separated by four points. Amy Bode brought home the bacon for Bristol, placing 8th overall.
That’s that. See you again tomorrow where I make up for lost time with a BUCS finals write up :)
