So here we are again. The start of another archery year packed with all the usual fun (and a few more serious competitions along the way!). I hope everyone has had a fruitful and fun summer and is looking forward to shooting once again. I certainly am!

The club will be very busy in the coming weeks, firstly with Fresher’s Fair on Tuesday 5th October, 11-4. This is always an excellent chance to meet the club and ask us questions to get a really good feel for what goes on at training, socialising and at competitions. Oh, and if you are postgraduate, you get a special hour starting at 10am before the undergraduates swarm upon us! Our stand is (weather permitting) on Upper Dalby Court, between the blue cube and the pink building (don’t worry, you can’t miss them!).

After the fresher’s fair comes the Have-a-go on Wednesday 6th October in Kensington Palace Gardens. This is always good fun and the first opportunity to play around with shiny equipment and generally get a feel for shooting. A couple of club members will gather outside Beit Hall at 12:15pm on Wednesday to walk everyone over to the shoot, and this should last at least a couple of hours.
Due to wet weather forecast this have-a-go session will be held on Thursday 7th October at Wilson House. A couple of club members will meet outside Beit at 7:30pm.

We will also repeat the have-a-go for those who cannot attend the Wednesday session indoors at Wilson House on Sunday 10th October starting at 6:30pm and finishing at 10pm. Again some club members will be walking over from Beit Hall, meeting at 6pm.

After these sessions, and beginning Tuesday 12th October comes novice training where all sessions from 8-10pm are dedicated just to teaching novices the ways of the bow. Our training times are as follows:

• Tuesdays from 8pm – 10pm
• Thursdays from 8pm – 10pm
• Sundays from 6pm – 10pm (6-8pm is for seniors only, we need some time to practice )

After three weeks or so of the training and helping things should settle down, allowing the seniors to shoot as well.

For this year membership fees have stayed put at £39 with a cost per session of about 35p. Now that is value for money! If you would like to join then go to archery membership on the union site, but if you are new then please feel free to attend a couple of sessions before deciding to join us. If you are a returning member then please help Edmund out and sign-up soon .

I hope that this year the committee will function well and provide everyone with a stable and successful club. Please do talk to us and make us do our jobs, it is what we are here for! Comments, suggestions and the like are always welcome and with the committee meeting regularly can be acted on quickly.

As always this website will be kept up to date with everything you need to know about the club. You can also follow icarchery on Twitter!

I look forward to meeting and catching up with everyone and hope everyone has a great year!

Stephen
Captain 2010/2011

On last Sunday, the 7th of March, this academic year’s SEAL league came to its conclusion as it saw its last match; we hosted the encounter between Southampton, Essex and Imperial.

After a rather hectic run-up to the event, involving bowsports “misplacing” an order for a cool week (despite being it being ordered with express delivery, calling them up several times and making up excuses of requiring proof of identity from our equipments officer) which meant Nish hat to do a last minute trek to an Archery store that opens on Sunday (he found one 1 hours drive away) – mad props to him! – and Southampton getting stuck in London’s evening traffic for a bit, we managed to start the shoot only about 30 minutes late.

From then on it was smooth sailing, and due to a superb and personal-best-shattering performance from both Rhys Coombs (566 out of 600) and Calvin Lui (547), and a solid performance from Jordan Muscatello and Robin Baumgarten we managed to break our club record for best Portsmouth team score and brought it up by 5 points to 2229!

Neither Southampton’s nor Essex’s (whose novice team was the best of the match, well done!) senior teams could cope with that, which means our victory was complete. As this was the last match and we didn’t lose against any competitor from SEAL, this means Imperial will be the winner of this years league! Well done to all of the involved seniors.

This win puts us in a good spot for the upcoming weekend, when the British University and Colleges Sport Championships will be held in Sheffield. We’ve got a strong team and we’re keen on giving Edinburgh a run for its money! More on that after that event. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

So it’s time for a bit of an update for the website; the schedule has been quite hectic with many competitions and shoots going on! It is almost time for the outdoor season, but shooting with continue as normal on Sundays(6-10), Tuesdays(8-10) and Thursdays(8-10) right up until the end of term.

AGM

It is around this time of year that we hold the AGM to discuss the year, look ahead to next year and elect the new committee. The meeting will take place in the Monkey Puzzle and all members are welcome to turn up and discuss things or stand for positions. A date and time (usually after a session) will be emailed round as soon as it has been decided.

BUTC

ICAC took two senior teams to the British University Team Championships hosted by Nottingham and Nottingham Trent Universities on the weekend of the 13th/14th February. The B team (Henry, Calvin and Rhys) made it to the quarter-finals, losing to Reading who had knocked out the A team (Jordan, Robin and Ian) in the previous round. Eventual winners were Edinburgh A, beating Nottingham A in the final head-to-head.

The competition format is different to any other, and with shouting and heckling to encourage your team mates, the atmopshere is unlike any other comeptition too. The tournament consists of two sections, a qualification (a Bray 1, 30 arrows at a 40cm face at 18m) and an elimination (2 arrows per archer at a hit/miss target). For the elimination there is also a time limit of 2 minutes per round and a 1m line behind the shooting line, behind which all archers must stand when not shooting.

Good fun was had, beer was drunk, world buffet was eaten, and the Imperial Squid was abducted by the Essex University Archery Club!

SEAL

On the 6th February 9 novices and 3 seniors travelled to Guildford for a SEAL match between Imperial, Surrey and Reading universities. We had some good results; Maciej Lembke won the Novice Gents shooting 503/60/11 and the senior team won overall!

• Full Results

Record Breaker

Well done again to Maciej Lembke for breaking the Novice Fita 25 record late last year! He shot 446 at the Cranford Fita 25 on Sunday 6th December.

Shooting Rounds

Try to shoot as many rounds as possible; it is good practice for competitions as well as helping us out in the E-League! Remember to count golds too! The results from December/January (S/H/G) are as follows:

IMPERIAL A

Final Score: 2164/240/(61+?)

Robin Baumgarten: 562/60/28
Rhys Coombs: 536/60/16
Ian Connelly: 533/60/17
Edmund Lam: 533/60/?

IMPERIAL B
Final Score: 2005/240/(37+?)

Calvin Lui: 522/60/18
Henry Tregidgo: 509/60/10
Stephen Wood: 490/60/?
Maria Papallou: 484/60/’9

Upcoming Competitions and Matches

• 21 Feb (Sun):       CLAA at Newham
• 28 Feb (Sun):       SEAL Match with Kent and ULU in Canterbury
• 7 March (Sun):     SEAL Match with Essex and So’ton, Wilson House
• 13th March (Sat): BUCS Indoors

Last Saturday, the 28th of November, we went to the Brunel Open which was this year held at Brunel University, surprisingly. We sent a big contingent of Archers over there, arriving with 9 novices and 12 seniors. While most of us got there early enough to set up our equipment with ample time to spare, some seniors got mysteriously lost on the campus of Brunel Uni and arrived just in time for the first end, missing both sighters.
Despite these cliff-hangers and some equipment- and concentration problems by some of our members, we got plenty of nice and shiny medals!

Novice Medals

Our novices did a good job with many shooting good scores above 400 points. Sarah Christen won both the Open and Student Female Novice Recurve categories and came 9th and 7th in the respective senior categories. Our male novices did well too, with Maciej Lembke, Alex Scvortov and Jonathan Hutt securing places in the Top 7 of both Male Novice Recurve categories. These scores helped our novice team to secure second place as both the Open and Student Novice Team after Essex, beating Southampton. Well done to all of them!

Senior Medals

The seniors were successful as well. Both our senior ladies that went to the competition did well, with Maria Papallou and Rachel Brook securing 2nd and 3rd place in the Student Ladies Senior Recurve category, and 3rd and 5th in the Open category. Jordan Muscatello went on to win the bronze medal in the highly competitive Student Male Recurve category, and Robin Baumgarten and Ian Connelly also managed to get into the top 10. This meant an overall 3rd place for the senior team in the Open and a good second place in the Student Team categories, only being beaten by Southampton and putting Essex into third place.

SEAL Match

Thanks to the good organisation by Adam Tippelt, we (Brunel, Sussex and Imperial) agreed to use the scores from this competition as our first South East University Archery League match of the season, which I’m happy to say we won comfortably. Both the senior and novice teams have shot nice scores and pulled in front of our opponents. The novice team consisted of Maciej Lembke, Sarah Christen and Alex Scvortov, and Jordan Muscatello, Robin Baumgarten, Ian Connelly and Rhys Coombs made up the senior team.

Well done everyone, and I think this is a decent start into the competitive academic archery year!

(Click on the images below to embiggen them)

A selection of images from the Halloween shoot a while back. Thanks to Faris Mustafa and Maciej Lembke for the images.

Gallery back up shortly.