On a Sunday blessed with unusually good weather, the club headed up to Birmingham for the final match of the indoor season, the BUTTS League Indoor Championships. The Coronavirus was in its full glory, however this didn’t dampen the spirit of our brave bowmen, bowwomen and sleep deprived novices. A Portsmouth round was first shot, fuelled by some much needed breakfast wraps from Maccies, and we pleasantly outperformed our expectations with many archers achieving PB scores. Our barebow ladies Kimberley and Cameron were able to once again display a dominating performance, bringing back a silver medal and a bronze medal, Liam took 4th place in the Gents category. In the novice Gents category, Andy and Sean again engaged in friendly competition with each other and snatched a bronze medal and 5th place respectively. Overall the experienced and novice teams finished in 6th/13 and 3rd/12 on the day respectively, putting in a great performance on behalf of the club. The icing on the cake was the final league scores of division 1, with Cambridge novices finishing in 3rd place overall after climbing a few places following the previous leg, and the experienced team finishing 6th 

To keep the beef going in true Oxbridge style, the team marched in a wedge formation and furiously shouted the name of their archenemy, before challenging them to the 71st Varsity match in front of an amazed audience. The gauntlet was formally thrown down by delivering a hand-calligraphed invitation penned by our very own Vicki Hodgson, sealed in light blue wax. 

In the second session, Liam, Yuhang, Sean, Andy, Cameron and Kimberley shot an Olympic style head to head round. Kimberley and Andy were able to make a few nerve wrecking comebacks, beating their opponents to progress to the gold medal matches. After some of the best shooting we’ve seen, both archers were able to deliver strong pressure to their fierce opponents, before coming home with a silver medal each. 

All in all, it was a day of great archery and sportsmanship. CUB archers will have their medals delivered in a week, as the team missed out on the awards ceremony at the Annual BUTTS Ball due to a lack of return transport. Oh well, you don’t get everything you want in life, so we'll just have to make do with medals instead!