Over the 2021/22 Indoor season we took part in two Postal Leagues. Both meant shooting a match against a different club from November to March – and hoping for the best! Teams consisted of two and three archers for compound and recurve, respectively, and were made up of the members with the highest scores for that month.
The first step was to get the expected scores for each team right, so we can be put in a division with similar teams. We are allowed an overshoot of 100 points, after which we are docked 2 points for each point above the overshoot score. I may or may not have gotten this part right.
The second step was to shoot for both leagues. While this was during the indoor season, Frostbites (36 arrows at 30m) were shot outdoors, hence the name. Good thing we are located where we are and no fingers or toes were lost to frostbite! We aimed to shoot as a club on the 1st Sunday each month – this worked particularly well for Feburary, when we shot on the 27th… However, it was great to see so many club members taking part. After all, it is much more fun to complain about the conditions if there’s company!
Our compound team of Jack and Lydia won all their 5 matches – clearly thanks to my great suggested score. And possibly some great shooting. Okay, yes, there was some great shooting too.
Our recurve team, which varied from month to month, won 3 out of 5 matches and finsihed a very good 2nd place. I may have been slightly optimistic with our achievable score, which we did not reach once (whoopsie!). However, thanks to several new members who put in really good scores, we still managed this great 2nd place.
The Portsmouth league was much of the same, only it was shot in the (sometimes) cozy gym at Coleridge. (1) Our compound team won all 5 matches and (2) I did not get the recurve team score right… Only this time it was too low – but I guess it balanced out nicely with the Frostbite! We had to give up a few points for being too good but still managed 4 wins and an overall win of our division. So all in all, it worked out great!
Because it was so much fun, we are also taking part in a summer postal league. Let’s see how setting the score for that one goes…
The full results for the postal leagues can be found here.
Anke Hannemann
CCB Tournaments Officer