Cape Provincial Tournament, 2018 (SANAA) – 1440 + Dbl 720
held at Bellville Archery Club
Saturday 3 March + Sunday 4 March 2018
This was a fairly heavily emotion laden tournament for me. My mother had passed and I had collected her ashes on Friday from Paarl. Day 1 of this event had to run smoothly so that I could leave and be on time to conduct her service at 14H30. Well, people messed around with their score sheets and I made the service with 4 mins to spare. So I conducted the service in uniform. Another unique moment for the memoirs. This would also be one of the last times that I will be writing these reports as another records officer had been elected and we are now in that no-man’s land called “transition”.
The weekend promised to be hot and waterless. This was also one of the few opportunities locally in which to shoot qualifying scores for colours, etc. The usual culprits were present, which made for some light banter being the order of the day. Nothing like a bit of rivalry to bring out the best in you. It was also good to see the return to the competition line of Adrian. This man is on a mission to represent and I for one wish him all the best. All good things come to those that wait, so don’t rush, let it happen at a natural pace.
For some reason there were a number of roadworks that attempted to delay a number of people making their way to the range, but except for the regular at the last moment people, everyone got in a fair share of practice arrows. And it was in that practice arrows time that the tone for the weekend was set. Except for one or two archers, everyone knew their way around an archery range, so there was very little for me and Karen (as candidate judge) to do.
I thinks I only have one really bad thing happen, and that was in my efforts to focus on the event, I did not ensure that I stayed hydrated – and that came back to bite me in a big way. Which is a lesson that any archer would do well to learn. You cannot be at peak performance if you do not look after yourself. But like I said, fortunately the “problems” were few and far between and easy to address. Which is probably the other lesson to learn, if you come prepared to face possible obstacles, you won’t get yourself into a panic.
Day 2 was much a mirror of day 1. Only a light breeze put in an appearance. Also putting in an appearance was Terence. He had an operation late last year and with that archery bug solidly embedded in his DNA, he could no longer resist the call of the shooting line. My friend, don’t rush, the scores will come as you recover. One step at a time.
We had a few visitors that sometimes caused a bit of distraction on both days, but we successfully made our way through the schedule for the event. The awards section was, shall we say, interesting. Thank you to all who wished me well for a tough weekend. Thank you to all who made the event a pleasure to be at and also successful.
Till the next time we see each other on the line, Golden arrows to all.
Alfredo
Download the rusults
