Any archer could tell you that the best Christmas gift would be a perfect day of shooting. Last weekend proved to be a great ending to the year as they competed under sunny skies at the Rhodes University Archery Club’s Christmas Challenge.
Any archer could tell you that the best Christmas gift would be a perfect day of shooting. Last weekend proved to be a great ending to the year as they competed under sunny skies at the Rhodes University Archery Club’s Christmas Challenge.
With 24 archers on the shooting line, the Rhodes club held its biggest competition this year with some coming as far as Johannesburg to compete in the last competition of the year.
Members competed in six of the divisions and St Andrew's Prep pupils in one. The wind proved challenging on Saturday, but archers kept strong and did not let it influence their determination.
On Sunday, the weather turned to beautiful sunny skies and a slight breeze, which made it perfect for shooting top scores. In the compound men’s division on Saturday, Rhodes's Lance Ho took silver, only a few points behind gold-medal winner from Gauteng, Christiaan de la Rey.
Sunday saw East London archers Theuns Kroon and Tony van Dyk taking silver and bronze after De La Rey again took gold.
Rhodes's Ettioné Ferreira beat her opponent and took gold on Sunday in the compound women’s division. In the recurve limited men’s division, Rhodes archery club chair Richard Llewelyn proudly took silver on both days.
In the recurve junior women and recurve women's divisions Rhodes's Catherine Venter and Christin Barnard, respectively, took gold on Saturday, and Sunday saw Barnard taking gold again.
Yashin Naidoo (Rhodes) took gold in the recurve cub boys' division on both days and made Grahamstown proud by breaking the 40m single and the 720 round South African records for his division.
Well done Yashin!
On Sunday, two archers from St Andrew’s Prep shot in the Standard Bow U13 division.
Some outstanding shooting took place between these young archers and ended with Daniel Bradfield taking gold and James Stadler silver.
