Malaysia Cup Archery - Round 1

Malaysia "indoor" Archery Tournament...

Fooling around before the shootout...

We came to know about a local indoor archery tournament taking place in Perak. The gang and I have been training our shot placement and agreed to take part.
This is also in preparation for the 2017 Princess Cup Archery tournament in Bangkok, Thailand.

Tournament day

I made arrangements to round up the Subang Barebow Archers team and shoot straight off to Simpang Pulai in Perak on Sept 24.
The plan was to leave at 04:30am and arrive just in time for registration and get along with the day's program.
Traditional archery was first on the list and there were at least 132 people taking part in the event.
Our buddy Mr Lau was first to go as he was prepped with the first group.

Lau, sleep-walking to the field.. Hahah!

Michelle setting up her bow

Listening to the briefing

Lau, at the shooting line

Something we didn't quite expect...

The "indoor" tournament had turned out to be an outdoor event. The shooting line was set at 18-meters with 10 shooting lanes.
We didn't expect the organization to be so bad, that the shoot actually started an hour late. Four groups were queued for the event. 
It was bad enough that most of us had grumbled about the repetition of the traditional archery event.
Instead of the usual one-round, archers were given two. 
Such, said the organizer, was done to give "satisfaction" to those who came from afar.
It was an agony to wait till our turn was up, nine hours later!

The advantage of training and mental conditioning

Taking my shot

Michelle in the second group

Taking scores

Michelle in action

My spotter...

Towards the last stage of our shot placement training in Subang Jaya, we took our shots mostly on a 40cm, 10-ring target face.
This helped us to hone our grouping and shot placements. 
When we got called to the shooting line, we did exactly what we had trained for.
I took my time, much to the frustration of other archers in the group. We were given 1 minutes 30 seconds to empty our quiver.
On the average, I took about 20 seconds to nock, aim and shoot.
My arrows landed mostly in the blue, red and yellow. 
In the first round, I scored 165 points and on the second-round, my scores improved at 186. I was a bit nervous during the first few ends, but having the advantage of shooting at the Princess Cup in Thailand had taught me to take my time. Pace each shot and try to make as few mistakes as possible. 
We were tested under rain and shine and I must say that Michelle did extremely well by scoring 168 points in the first round and getting 177 points in the second.
By the time she was done, it was way past 7:30pm. It got dark and we were done. We weren't bothered to go into the quarter-finals. 

Ranking 

Out of 54 archers in the barebow category, we came in at 10 and 11 respectively. We qualified for the next round, but were too beat to carry on. We have a two-hour drive to get back to Subang Jaya. That said, we had to forgo the shootout. 

The good...

Well, I have to say that the fellowship of archers was the main draw for this tournament. There were a lot of nice folks at the event ground. I met some familiar faces and some folks from the Monster Chill tournament in Malacca last year.

The bad...

Bad organization really marred the reputation of the tournament managers. The event went on until midnight. Many of those who qualified did a walk-over. 

The ugly...

I have to say that safety was the major issue here. While some folks were taking their practise shots, people can be seen walking in the background. And some idiots were smoking on the shooting line, this is a no-no in terms of sporting ethics.