Its been a fabulous start to 2015 summer shoot season, as you may or may not know a small group of particularly daft BJ Smurfs, (Adeel, Andrew Grant, Andy and Elize Goetzee, Chris Joyce, Dave Parker, Ellie Dyson, Ismail and compound Koala Shai) love waking up at ‘ridiculous O’clock’ on a Sunday morning and head off the four corners of the earth, as far as Leicestershire even, (yes I know, that far).
On the whole its been PB after PB with a few hiccups, (Chris has hopefully realised why he keeps shooting arrows over the boss). Three competitions in and Dave Parker got his first medal of the season, coming 3rd in the Gents Recurve at Welbeck Archers York. It was a soggy start but after the rain stopped it was near perfect shooting conditions, Andrew Grant got his second Bowman score. So all in all a good day. Best of all Elize shot her third Junior Bowman score. So a big congratulations to her!!
The highlight for this summer so far has to be the Wilford Bowmen WA1440 World Record Status Shoot. Wilford will be hosting the finals of the European Archery Championships next year with the heats being hosted at Highfields on University Boulevard and the finals in the Market Square. With the club hosting such a prestigious event Archery GB held a ‘dry run’ and we were the lucky guinea pigs! How lucky I can’t tell you. Normally its turn up blurry eyed, pitch a tent, if you can find a spare space! However this time it was like rolling up to the Quiditch Finals at Hogwarts….well almost.
We were met with a beautiful lane of pitched gazebos, with tables and chairs. Tablets to use for scoring each end, the totals were then sent via WIFI to flatscreen monitors in the gazebos which gave a constant stream of who came where and by how much! For those with smart phones you could check your scores online http://ianseo.net/Details.php?toId=1093 . Put simply it was AMAZING, Andy Goetzee got a PB as did I and my first Bowman score, to be honest the plush surroundings obviously suited me as at one point I was second! (its irrelevant where I finished 
).
Our amazing Ellie Dyson got a fabulous 2nd place in the Ladies Recurve, well done Ellie! No mean feat in very tough field. All in all a great start for the Burton Joyce Archers Smurf Army.
Shai
Tournament Smurf