EVESHAM Archery Club’s Jacquie Holmes produced a superb performance to win a silver medal at the Archery Masters at Lilleshall Hall National Sports Centre.
The invitation-only event is open to archers who have achieved Master Bowman or Grand Master Bowman standard and consists of three components. It involves a ranking round followed by head-to-head matches on the Saturday and a final 12-dozen arrow round on the Sunday.
Grand Master Bowman Holmes shot extremely well in the ranking round – shooting a personal best score to secure second place and a bye for the first leg of the head-to-heads.
With some consistent shooting, Holmes managed to beat three opponents to make it through to the gold medal match against Layla Annison.
However, although Holmes was performing well, she just could not better Annison’s accuracy, but nevertheless secured a silver medal place after day one.
Day two brought tricky conditions as the heat and humidity ramped up throughout the day and a slight gusty wind at times caused some wayward shots.
However, Holmes managed an exceedingly good score and fourth place for this round.
Final positions are made by adding the position points up from all three components and Holmes had a points total of eight after her two second places and her fourth from day two.
With Annison taking first place with points totalling four, Holmes clinched the silver medal and Lucy Mason finished third on 14 points.
A wonderful achievement at this elite event was made even better when Holmes also won the trophy for the highest lady compound score for the 60m distance on the second day.
EVESHAM archers were top of the podium at a competition held by Deer Parks Archers in Cheltenham.
The tournament consisted of a ranking round in the morning and a head-to-head round in the afternoon and wherever the archers ranked in the morning determined their opponents during the head-to-head matches.
Recurve archer Sally Gilder ranked third from the morning and beat her opponents to make the gold medal match, in which she was defeated, but the silver medal was excellent consolation.
Holmes, shooting in the compound category, ranked first and managed to win all of her head-to-heads and finish top of the list to take the gold medal.
Jamie Harris, in the men’s compound category, also ranked first with a very impressive score. He kept the pressure up until the last moment in the gold medal match when both he and his opponent finished on the same score.
In this situation there is a one-arrow shoot-off and the archer closest to the X in the middle of the target wins. Harris hit the X whilst his opponent faltered, meaning gold was Harris’.
