The first weekend of September saw the 2011 Outdoor Archery National Championships brought to the University of Limerick for the very first time. With Limerick named as the 2011 European City of Sport the UL Archery club worked tirelessly to bring the most contested competition of the Irish archery calendar to the Arena Bowl. This was the first time that the Arena Bowl has ever held an archery event and to bring such a prestigious shoot to its archery debut was a wonderful honour for the club.

Saturday saw the 2011 UL Outdoors being shot at a fixed distance throughout the day with a double 70m round for recurve archers, a double 60m for cadet and master recurves and a double 50m for all compounds. First place titles in recurve went to Keith Hanlon – senior male, Sinead Cuthbert – senior female, Peter Cummings – junior male, Jim O’Connor – master male and Katie Hamilton – 30m beginners. The compound titles went to Colin Griffin – senior male, Deirdre Rogers – senior female, Richard Delaney – master male and Orla Barber – cadet female. Full results can be found on the 2011 results page. With perfect shooting conditions holding throughout the day a number of new Irish records were also set on Saturday.

Unfortunately good weather conditions did not continue for Sundays IAAA 2011 National Championships. Archers battled gusty showers while completing a 72 arrow qualifying round during the morning stage of the shoot. Although the afternoon’s head to head stage saw no improvement in conditions a number of archers fought some extremely tight competitions to progress to the next round. One of the most notable matches was a phenomenal shoot off early in the competition between Dun Laoghaire’s Joe Malone and UCD’s James Ryan. Things were just as heated on the compound line (see picture below)with a quarter final between Colin Griffin and Martin Wilkinson tied on 132 and forced to a shoot off. Michéal Irwin and Peter Cummings also got their own shoot off in the junior male recurve finals.

Male Compound Photo by John Halas

2011 saw a number of archers retaining their titles with Keith Hanlon securing senior male recurve ,Tara Purcell holding onto senior female compound and Sinead Cuthbert retaining her senior female recurve title. Rohan O’Duill – senior male compound, Michéal Irwin – junior male recurve, Aisling Finn – junior female recurve, Niall Boland – junior male compound, Tom Meade – master male recurve, Enda Coffey – master male compound, Patrick O’Sullivan – cadet male recurve and Orla Barber – cadet female compound, all found their places on Sunday’s podium.

The weekend’s event was thanks to more than UL Archery and they would like to give sincere thanks to all of the clubs, archers, stewards and volunteers who gave their time, expertise and equipment in order for this competition to take place.

Maeve Reidy Female Recurve Photo by John Halas

A gallery of the weekends events can be found at http://johnhalas.zenfolio.com/p456507475 thanks to photographer John Halas. John has published some fantastic images like  action from the female recurve category  from Sundays shooting ( Maeve pictured above) John has also kindly supplied the images for this post.

Article supplied thanks to Mags Carey UL Archery Club

John Smith won his first round match against the 36th placed archer Li Xiang An Noel from Singapore with a score of 144 Vs 134. John then progressed to the final 16 to be eliminated by the number 4 placed archer from qualifying. Despite being knocked out John  managed to break his previously held record for 15 arrows shot at 50m with a score of 144 out of 150. John was defeated in the second elimination round by the fourth ranked Abhishek Verma from India by a narrow margin but not before John broke the record in the first half hour of competition. The record was previously held by John which stood at 142 out of 150. John spoke afterwords with press officer Jolie Niland saying “I am really gutted that I didn’t do as well as I did last year but to be able to shoot a new Irish record is something to be proud of,”.  More detailed results can be found at www.archery.org

DIT archer John Smith has completed his 72 arrow qualifying round in the men's compound class at the World University Games. John shot a score of 670 ranking him 29th overall ahead of the head to head round which will get underway tomorrow at 8pm Irish time. John is placed against a 36th ranked archer from Singapore who finished 20 points behind John in the qualifying rounds. Live archery coverage of the shoot can be found at www.livefisu.tv from 8pm tomorrow evening results for all categories can be found on the official FITA website at www.archery.org

The Colleges and University Sports Association of Ireland (CUSAI) have announced the 26 athletes who will be competing at the World University Games in Shenzhen , China , August 12th to the 23rd.
Chinese Ambassador Liu Biwei and Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Tourism & Sport, Michael Ring TD were in attendance to meet the athletes as well as give encouragement in their medal quests. 
Ambassador Biwei opened the ceremony by welcoming the athletes and expressed his delight at the opportunities that the Games bring to Ireland .
“With over 180 countries attending the games in Shenzhen, this is a chance for the athletes to be ambassadors for Ireland in China ,” said Ambassador Biwei.
“Shenzhen will be a place that they can win together, learn about each other and to understand others better as well as experience Chinese culture.”
Minister of State Michael Ring echoed the Chinese Ambassador as he expressed the honour of representing your country abroad.
“Not only is it a great honour to represent Ireland but it is an even bigger honour to represent your country abroad.”
“We want to wish these 26 athletes the very best of luck and hope they will be returning with medals in hand,” said Minister Ring. 
CUSAI Chairman, Kieran Dowd closed the ceremony by giving a special thanks to all those involved as the Irish Delegation and competitors are set to depart for Shenzhen beginning August 8th.
This event will mark the 26th International University Sports Federation (FISU) Summer Universiade and 26 Irish athletes will be competing in six different sports including Archery, Athletics, Golf, Swimming, Taekwondo and Weightlifting.
Ireland begins its medal quest on the 13th of August with weightlifter Kevin D’Arcy competing in the 85kg class in the Snatch, Clean and Jerk event.
The following day will open the Archery and Swimming events with nine Irish athletes taking part.
The official opening ceremony of the World University Games takes place on Friday, August 12th.
Press releases and results will be sent out daily by PRO Jolie Niland (jolie.niland@yahoo.com) and photographs will be available from Inpho Photography (www.inpho.ie).
Further event information can be found at www.cusai.ie or http://www.sz2011.org/Universiade/. Full schedules are now available and a complete listing of athletes and competitions are below.  

Archery
John Smith, Co Meath
 
Athletics
Amy Foster, Co Down
Brendan Boyce, Co Donegal
Darren McBrearty, Co Donegal
Jessie Barr, Co Limerick
Justine Kenny, England
Kourosh Foroughi, Co Meath
Laura Reynolds, Co Leitrim
Micheál Doyle, Co Dublin
 
Golf
Emma O’Driscoll, Co Cork
Louise Mernagh, Co Wicklow
Lucy Simpson, Co Antrim
Barry Anderson, Co Sligo
John Greene, Co Dublin
Kelan McDonagh, Co Roscommon
Stephen Walsh, Co Dublin
 
Swimming
Aisling Cooney, Co Dublin
Bethany Carson, Co Antrim
Fiona Doyle, Calgary , Canada
Karl Burdis, Co Dublin
Lorna Cummins, Co Cork
Ryan Harrison, Co Derry
Niamh O’Sullivan, Co Cork
Niall Wynn, Co Dublin
 
Taekwondo
Niamh Buffini, Co Dublin
 
Weightlifting
Kevin D’Arcy, Co Galway

Best of Luck to the Irish Team in the World Archery Para Championships 2011.

The qulifying rounds for Para World Championships has seen some fantastic performances from all the archers representing the Irish team at the event. In the qualfying rounds Jody O' Neil ranked 10th in the recurve men standing category with a score of 1193, Barry Guider ranked 26th in the Mens recurve w1/w2 category with a score of 1046 and John Cairns ranked 51 in the mens compound open category with a score of 1291.

Results for the elimination rounds can be found on the front page of the FITA Website www.archery.org

For results from the current World Archery Championships and to see how the Irish team are performing

Click Here