Well, I think it’s fair to say our trial summer tournament was a success! Enjoyed by all present we made a decent day of it, enjoying good archery and good company.
Friendly competition in the morning was followed with a friendly head-to-head and a have-a-go in the afternoon. A break in the middle provided the space for our picnic lunches, which seems to have been a good idea, particularly as that was supplemented by Lesley’s cakes and the fresh strawberries Keith had picked for us – thanks to both!
Thinking of food, thanks have to go to Clare who came along early and cooked bacon rolls for the set up crew – how welcome was that!
With the field all set and bosses up at all the distances for our range of “Nationals” members started to arrive and prepare for the competition! It was great, everybody shot, at all levels and ages, with recurve and bare bow being the dominant choice on the line. And, as you can see in the photo’s taken by Oliver’s Dad, Sean, of the line, a very impressive one it was too, he’s made us look like a proper big tournament! Thank you Sean for the great shots and we hope you enjoyed the Have-a Go, Oliver makes it look easy doesn’t he! On the photographic front, Richard must have had his finger on the button almost all day (how then did he have time to beat me in the National!). He’s really caught a sense of the day and provided us all with great reminders of a day well spent. You can find all the pic’s here… gallery
During the day, Andy worked on clearing the space where the container will go and we have to say a big thank you to Maria’s husband, Pete, a pro-landscaper, who came along and strimmed the space saving Andy hours of painstaking secateur work (yep, that’s what he’d been using!).
And, in respect of tradition, thirteen of us stood around watching one man work!
As the head-to-head and have-a-go sessions kicked off Dean set about dealing with the scoring and results and as we all know what a chore just scoring one sheet can be we can thank Dean for going through all of them! This work wold tell us who won what and let Keith get to grips with his first dishing out of the medals he’s recently had produced for us. Thanks for both and thanks for making it through the ribbon chaos that I think you described as a “snakes’ wedding!”
Just before the medals we’d done the raffle, thanks to Lesley for dealing with that one. Dean, in the nick of time, maintained his “always wins a raffle prize” reputation, but despite repeated wins Mikey just couldn’t make it away from the prize table with that bottle of Carlsberg. It was around this time that Dean’s gazebo decided to take a flying lesson and you can see the brave retrieval in the gallery – he’d only just replaced the legs after it got bent blowing away at Whitehill during a tournament there! Thanks to Kym’s husband Matt for jumping in to lend an appreciated hand with that.
While we all had a good time this was of course about learning things for putting on a summer outdoor event next year. I think that we’ve learned, or perhaps more, confirmed against all doubt, that we can put together a great team, get things done and done well. The enthusiasm and commitment we’re privileged to have in our club is tremendous – that’s probably the best start any event can get.
What about Father’s Day? It was interesting to see how that affected numbers and we were missing quite a few members, which is of course fair enough on Father’s Day! Clearly we can muster sufficient numbers that we can (assuming all you lovely people that enjoyed the day volunteer to put on such a day for others to enjoy) host an event on that day, but if we do it then we need to accept entries may be lowered. That isn’t a particular problem as an outdoor event carries less cost than an indoor one. And, this trial has given the committee food for thought in relation to the date we go for.
How did the timing go? Well, while we didn’t have a particular plan, it went okay and showed we can fit Nationals into a day, along with something else if we want to.
Success all round I’d say! Thanks to all who helped, attended and enjoyed.
