British Indoor Field Archery Champs – What to expect?
Posted: 1 January 2025
BRITISH INDOOR FIELD ARCHERY CHAMPIONSHIPS
By Richard Wright, NFAS Field Officer.
A REMINDER of what to expect from the Indoor Championships.
CAR PARKING.
Upon arrival, there is room at the venue for over 200 cars on tarmac in their car park, so certainly not what we are used to! This venue is used regularly for markets and events so additional car parking on the neighbouring field can provide parking for a thousand cars but, as quite a lot of entries car share with family and friends, we are not expecting to need to go beyond the car park area itself. We will have marshals out to greet you, and make sure that members are parking to maximise the area.
SCORE CARD COLLECTION / CHAMPS CHECK-IN.
As a lot of aspects to this event suggest that there will be moments we save time compared to the 3D or National champs, we have made the decision to move the sign in time on both days back by one hour. Admin opening will be 9am – 10am on Saturday the 18th January, and 8am – 9am on Sunday the 19th of January. This decision was made so that members who are within driving distance that morning can drive to the venue without the need to come down the night before and have to stay in a hotel on the Friday night. This means that we will be closing admin at 10am on Saturday and 9am on Sunday, you MUST have collected your cards before this deadline.
START WALK OUT.
The two sports halls are only separated by a narrow access road for the venue, and the doors to access each building face each other. The doors are therefore approximately 10 metres apart. As usual, we will have a quick welcome announcement and then the intention is to get archers out to their starting halls and positions as quickly as possible. This in theory should be a lot quicker than an outdoor champs, but archers need to be very clear which hall they are in to ensure a smooth start to the event. Once in each hall there will be a brief safety announcement as usual, highlighting any specific safety items, and also the location of the toilets and safe exits.
HALL LAYOUT.
The halls will have a clear shooting line, which all archers will shoot from. The line will be divided up into 40 shooting lanes which will have 4 archers per shooting lane. The shooting start positions will not be equally spaced, as I have made the decision to give some shooting positions MORE space, and other shooting positions will have a one metre minimum of space. The shooting positions which will be allocated more space will be positions where the archer is shooting at a target angled away from them in a different place in the hall. This extra space means they will be able to shoot the target without interfering with their neighbour archer. The targets will be in themes, with certain types of animals in each shooting hall. The targets will not necessarily be in straight lines away from the archer, and may not necessarily be spaced equally along the hall. We might even see ‘herds’ or groups of animals in a theme, with a number clearly marked at the animal so that the archer knows which animal they are shooting and scoring. This gives me, as the course layer, the fun of creating shots of different distances and not just the distance of the shooting line to the back wall. I have had a couple of people surprised at this and ask whether there is any possibility of arrows hitting each other in the air as they are being shot across each other. At the events like this that I have attended, and others I have discussed this with who have attended such events in other countries, this has never been known to happen. On the odd chance that it does happen, and two arrows collide and are found together / proved to have hit each other, both archers will be permitted to take the shot again, at the discretion of the Field Officer.
SHOOTING AN INDOOR FIELD EVENT.
Each archer will be allocated a starting peg, as normal, and will start from that position. The hall will be controlled by an electronic whistle, which will instruct the archers when they can shoot and when they must stop, or collect their arrows. We will use the same signals that we use with the air horns which is one clear blast to start and three short, sharp blasts to indicated a stop, or to tell archers that they are clear to go and collect their arrows. Each peg position will have 4 archers and archers will go to the shooting line one at a time, and take their shots (see scoring below). Once all archers have taken their shots, please clear the shooting line to allow the lead marshal for each hall to see that all archers have cleared the shooting line. Once shooting starts, it is important that all archers in each group are ready to shoot, and take turns promptly. If the shooting line looks clear, and the all clear sound is given, any archer that had not shot will unfortunately lose the points for that target. Once the all clear signal is given, all archers will be advised to leave their bow in line with the next shooting peg, before going to score. As this will be a full day of walk backs, by moving your bow first and at the same time as all other archers, your bow should be waiting for you upon your return at the next shooting position. The only exception to this will be target 40, where we will place a bow stand to allow archers to leave their bow before returning and then walking down the hall to the target 1 position. Once you have heard the clear to collect signal, please be careful when collecting arrows as it will be possible that you will have to pass other shot targets on the way to score and retrieve your own arrows. Once you have scored, please then return to the shooting line at the next peg position, moving down the hall.
SCORING.
I have created a unique scoring round specifically for this event. Each archer will shoot 2 arrows at each target as they move down the range, shooting a total of 80 arrows each day. The scoring will be 12 for an inner kill, 10 for a kill, 8 for a wound on BOTH arrows. This means that if you get 2 x wounds, you would score 16, or if you get 2 x inner kills you would get 24, simulating what archers might expect from a big game round. Similarly, if you miss the target and hit with the second arrow, you would still score 12 for the inner kill, 10 for the kill, or 8 for the wound which is similar to what you would score from the white peg on a big game round. My hope is that this scoring system, whilst being adapted for an indoor event with a fixed shooting line, will give archers a feel for how they have shot compared to how they might usually score.
BREAKS.
All archers will have their breaks after targets 20 and 40 are shot. There will be no jumping of groups, and you MUST shoot in the order sequence that groups go for their break or lunch. There are excellent toilets in both halls and the venue themselves have a catering unit which will offer hot food. This means that all archers will pass through a break stop at least once in the day. I am pleased to report that in both halls there are also a number of chairs, which can be used at both break times, but also we will distribute a few down the back of the shooting area to allow archers that need a short rest the ability to have a seat.
DOGS.
We have been given permission to accept dogs into this venue, however due to the nature of the venue, its very important that these dogs are well behaved, do not bark (or whine), are good with people and other dogs (they MUST be sociable, I’m sorry but we cant have dogs that aren’t good with people or other dogs in close proximity), and lastly are well behaved. This will be a difficult environment for dogs, so we are asking to please consider finding them alternative arrangements while you are at this event.
NON-SHOOTING CHILDREN, WALKERS AND SHOOT GUARDIANS.
I’ve been asked by two families that have small non-shooting children, whether they could have their child with them in the shooting area, and the answer of course is yes, the restriction of walkers is to simply limit as much as possible the volume of people behind the line. In what we will call Hall A, there is a social area behind a waist high wall that walkers/viewers can use, and they can easily interact with archers who are just on the shooting area. In Hall B, the viewing area is more remote, and is accessed via some stairs to an upper small viewing gallery. Therefore anyone who is a (non-shooting specifically) shoot guardian will still need to be in the hall for Hall B. Please note that either of these areas are not designed for a LOT of people watching, and priority is for the family members and friends who MUST attend.
DAY TWO.
On the second day archers will shoot the opposite hall, so that all archers experience both halls. Each hall has been designed with a different theme, and will have a different style and feel. The venue itself is very different in the two halls, so the theming has been allocated and adapted to take advantage of the two different styles of hall. There may even be some ‘sub’ themes with small areas of ‘like’ animals. The start time on the second day as mentioned above is one hour earlier than the Saturday, and is 8am – 9am. All archers must have checked in and have collected their own cards before 9am. All arrows will be checked again by marshals before collecting your cards. The raffle and medal ceremony will be held immediately after the 2 halls have completed shooting. As each halls archers will all finish together, the admin team will have a huge job of completing the scoring as quickly as possible, which will give us time to strip the halls and return the targets to the containers. We will be asking archers to assist with this, in order to make it as easy as possible.
SOME FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Shooting line:- Stand behind it , or straddle it?
We will stand behind it, and the line itself will be the “peg” with markers on the line too indicating correct “peg” position.
Is the shooting order ROTATED within each target group to negate gaining an advantage as to where to aim if the bow style forbids the use of Binoculars?
i.e. If a C/U bow class, (who can use binoculars), shoots first at each target, then the rest of that target group who’s bow style may not have binoculars use have a good aiming guide advantage. Rotating shooting orders would reduce this.
I don’t want to impose rotation because it isn’t imposed as part of everyday life in the NFAS. At a normal open shoot or champs we don’t do this, so I’m not going to enforce this for the indoor champs.
What’s the shooting procedure for an arrow BOUNCE-BACK and its score value?
The bounce back procedure is already covered as part of the shooting rules, the only difference will be the score value, the score value will be the scores from this round, not from a big game. The procedure itself remains the same.
Are group 3 and 4 size, 3D targets set as pairs in each shot lane to allow fair distribution of arrows, (one 3D per two archers in each shooting group) to reduce arrow damage and deflection and allow access to the higher scoring zones?
Whilst I don’t want to give too much away, yes there will be some of this, but not all, and also slightly different to how other bodies do this. Most of the group 4 targets will be in pairs, with the archer shooting one at each (so not to give any left/right advantage).
I assume the invited “Small, non-shooting Children” accompanying their parents are NFAS affiliated?
The two families that have reached out to ask are definitely both NFAS affiliated. For our insurance, nothing changes here, and all attendees are NFAS affiliated. Anyone not booked in, even affiliated, wont be able to be in the shooting area. Anyone not affiliated will definitely not be allowed in either hall.
Lastly, registration reads as though on both days, ( last sentence) it closes, no more collection of cards, at 10.00am! I assume this 10.00am deadline only relates to Saturday as, (as stated), the registration times for Sunday have been brought forward by one hour and will close at 09.00 am.
You are correct, I must have missed that. Card collection closes at 10.00am on Saturday and 09.00am on Sunday. I will correct that information, as I intend to put out the “what to expect” in the next magazine too as a reminder.