A young Burnham-On-Sea archery enthusiast has won a silver medal in a top national tournament.
Darragh Joyce competed at the Archery GB Youth Festival, a national tournament at Lilleshall National Sports Centre in Shropshire.
In the Under 18 category Darragh was competing over a distance of 60m. The first day was held to rank the competitors by shooting 72 arrows and Darragh found himself ranked in an excellent third place.
The second day was spent shooting teams rounds, where both of Darragh’s teams were unfortunately knocked out in a shoot-off during the early rounds.
The third day of the tournament saw individual matches. These matches have a ‘knockout format’, with head-to-head competition against another archer.
Darragh won his first match 6-2, taking him into the quarter finals against a Scottish team shooter who seemed to have the whole of his country behind him given the noise his fellow team mates and coaches made!
This was a much closer competition that resulted in a 6-4 win, and a match-up against the second-ranked archer in the semi-final.
Darragh started the match strong with a score of 28 (from 30) to win the first set, halved the next set with a 24, and then won the next two rounds with a 29 and a 27, taking the match 7-1.
Darragh’s proud father Adam says: “The gold medal then swung from archer to archer, with Darragh losing the first set, winning the second set, losing the third set, and then winning a ‘must-not-lose’ fourth set!”
“In the fifth set it came down to one arrow which his competitor took advantage of, and Darragh ending with a silver medal, and another trip to a national podium!”
The medal capped a very successful few days for the Burnham-On-Sea teenager.
