During the July-August vacation this year the Southern Bowtech Archery Club held its fourth annual ‘Back to School Archery Tournament,’ with Naparima Girls’ High School emerging as the overall victors. The other participating schools included Asja Girls’ College, San Fernando, Parvati Girls’ Hindu College and San Fernando Central Secondary School.
Training for the competition began on the 23rd of July and took place every Tuesday for the four succeeding weeks which led up to the competition. All participating archers of Naparima Girls’ High School were required to attend these sessions from four to six thirty in the afternoon at Southern Bowtech’s training grounds. The N.G.H.S. team was led by Anuka Harry and Naia Carvalho, who served as captain and vice-captain respectively.
During this time archers practiced their form and trained on the various distances which were to be shot on the day of the competition. Experienced archers were required to shoot at thirty and twenty meter distances, while those less acquainted with the sport shot at fifteen meters. Additionally, one point was awarded to the school for each archer who attended each training session from the second week. When these sessions concluded, the school’s team had acquired a total of thirty-three of the thirty-six points.
On the day of the competition, the 19th of August, the team was required to participate in three categories. The first of these was the ranking round, during which all participating archers were required to shoot seven ends of three arrows on their respective distances and tally their final score. Here, many of the school’s athletes earned medals in their specific distances, gaining three points for each gold medal, two for silver and one point for a bronze medal. Secondly, a team of the three top-scoring archers were selected to participate in the ‘team shoot’ during which they vied for first place with teams from the other schools. N.G.H.S’s team secured the second place spot earning an additional six points to the tally. Finally, three archers were selected to participate in the ‘Paper Shoot,’ one compound archer and two recurve. This portion of the competition required the archers to shoot at a rectangular piece of paper. If the archer was successful in hitting the paper, they would advance to the second round where the paper was folded in half. This process was then repeated until there was only one archer remaining. Unfortunately, the school’s team was unsuccessful in this segment of the competition.
At the end of the competition it was announced that Naparima Girls’ High School was the overall winner as the school had secured the highest total of points, earning Naps the ‘Challenge Trophy’ and a first place plaque. The school was followed by Parvati Girls in second place, Asja in third and San Fernando Central Secondary in fourth.
