Louth's archers take part at European Championship

For Irish archers, it was a great opportunity to compete at a European Championships without having the expense and time normally involved in such a competition.

To compete at this level, the archer has to train hard, compete and reach a certain level. You then submit two qualification scores to enter the competition. In this case, you then got into your car or onto public transport and headed to Waterford.

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Normally, to get to a European Championship, you must book and pay for your aeroplane ticket, car hire and accommodation.  Taking your archery equipment on a plane can be an experience in itself - aside from the expense.

For starters, not all airlines will accept archery bows; some will take you and your bow in the hold, provided you 'take the bow down'. 'Taking down the bow' means destringing it.

With a recurve or barebow, it is an easy thing to do, and most people carry those bows in that way. However, taking down a compound bow is extremely difficult, and you need specialist equipment to do it.

When you restring a compound bow - this would only be done where new strings were being fitted - you need to shoot it constantly for quite some time before it is back to spec.

This means that you cannot travel on the airlines that offer cheaper fares, as they are the ones that demand that you 'take the bow down'.

On top of that, you must take your bow case as oversized luggage, which again is more expensive than the normal luggage.

These are some of the reasons why there was such excitement at the idea of a European Archery Championships taking place here in Ireland.

Archers assembled in the SETU Arena in Waterford on Monday, 2nd March, for registration and to receive their schedules for the week.

There was also an Official Practice session, and this was followed by the March of Nations, where all the archers marched behind their nations' flags and paraded around the arena to the applause of all there, and this led on to the Opening Ceremony.

Tuesday, the championships started in earnest.  Each day, the archers were divided into seven Groups, starting at 7am with the last group starting at 8pm.

CúChulainn had archers competing in individual Barebow, Recurve and Compound categories, plus Team events in the same categories.

The competition started with the Standard Round competition, followed by the Flint Round, then another Standard Round and then on Friday, along with the final two groups, there were shootouts to sort out final places (between archers who had the same scores as one another).

CúChulainn's Fiachra Judge fell into this category as he had scored the exact same score as another archer in his category.

This meant that the two archers had to shoot another 15 arrows each in groups of five to sort out the third and fourth places in the Freestyle Unlimited Adult Male category.

Unfortunately, Fiachra lost the shootout and missed out on the Bronze medal by just a few points. This was followed by sorting out the teams and then by the award ceremony.

The results for CúChulainn were as follows:

Individual Categories - Alan Convery, Professional Freestyle Unlimited Gold and European Champion; Gerard Quinn, Barebow Recurve Cub Male, Gold and European Champion.

Fiachra Judge, Freestyle Unlimited Adult Male, joint 3rd but re-assigned to 4th place after shootout; Siobhán Keeble, Barebow Recurve Adult Female, 4th place, and Christy Banks, Bowhunter Recurve, Senior Male, 4th.

All the rest of the CúChulainn club shot well in the individual categories, with some recording Personal Best scores, others shooting to their best level and yet others disappointed with their performance - such is the life of an archer.

The last event was the Team events. These were made up of the highest place archers from the same country and not necessarily from the same club.

Neil Keeble, Siobhán Keeble, Claudia Heinze Banks - all CúChulainn - with Stephen Kerr.

Barebow Recurve Bronze Medal; Oisín Donnelly, Kevin Donnelly, (CúChulainn) - with Chris Kilroe, Bowhunter Unlimited, 4th place; Éamonn Rogers (CúChulainn) - with Adrian White, David Leigh and Deirdre Shannon, Freestyle Unlimited Compound 4th place.

While not all were completely happy with how the week went for them, all were delighted with the host IFAF for a really well-run championship and returned to their homes tired but content.

Not content with spending the week in Waterford competing in the European Championships, Peter Gilmore, along with fellow CúChulainn Archer Ryan Dougan, went to the two-day Shamrock Shoot hosted by Ballyvalley Archers, Banbridge, where the results were as follows: Ryan Dougan, Senior Barebow, Gold medal, Peter Gilmore, 50+Barebow Silver medal.

CúChulainn Archers holds beginner courses throughout the year. All enquiries to cuchulainnarchers@hotmail.com