Archery
Evesham archers take county gold

Buy photos » Tazmin Pugh on her way to victory. (s)

IN A SUPERB display of shooting, five members of Evesham Archery Club won two gold, one silver and two bronze medals at the County of Worcester Archery Championships at March Hare Archers' Throckmorton field range.

Evesham Archery Club is ostensibly a competitive target archery club, as seen in the recent Olympic and Paralympic Games, but always manages to come up trumps in competing in this foreign discipline staged by the County Archery Association each year.

In field archery competitors move from target to target set at varying distances and different sized target faces, ranging from 60m down to 15m for adults.

The Evesham club can now proudly boast eight previous members who have shot for either Great Britain or England and joined by others from the club have won nearly every division - both senior and junior - of UK Archery's championships since moving to their permanent home in Badsey in 1984.

So good is Evesham's reputation, other top representative archers from all over England and Wales have gravitated to the 24/7 facilities and coaching available at the club.

One esteemed member, Simon Tarplee, still owns the distinction of winning the European Compound Championships twice running.

The club was also an integral part of the 700th anniversary of the Simon de Montfort memorial celebrations in 1965, with the 750th coming up in three years' time and the club's own 50th anniversary coming up itself next year.

Their latest international archer, 16-year-old Sally Gilder who attends Chipping Campden School, never relinquished an early lead in this year's field championships as she finished with a score of 247 and took the Open Ladies Olympic (recurve) bow division in some style.

With other medal places being calculated from a handicap arrangement, coming second to her daughter was mother Sue Gilder, closely followed by England archer and an International Masters Champion Linda Haines of Lenchwick, who had to contend with a cruelly low handicap behind her name.

In the men's Olympic bow and making it a full set of medals for the Gilder family, father Mike Gilder took the bronze medal in a tightly fought Men's competition, in which second and third places were decided once again on handicap scores.

For the Juniors, Pershore's Tazmin Pugh had a go at her first open archery competition, having won the Evesham club's Junior Championships the previous month.

She did not disappoint as she became Junior Female Olympic Bow County Field Champion for 2012 with a score of 211 and gained the highest handicap score of anyone on the day of 1,573.

With such fine performances from all the Evesham members, it came as no surprise when they collected another four gold medals in the team event sorted by the accumulated total of their four top handicap scores, although with any combination they would have still won.

They totalled an unprecedented 5,621 points and took the County Field Trophy once again, with Malvern second on 5,451 and followed by Redhill, Wyre Forest and Droitwich.

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