Senior Indoor Home Nations 2023

In a change to the usual schedule this year’s National Indoors started with a Friday evening session. And that certainly wasn’t the only change encountered by Scotland’s senior team as this year marked a significant transition for the squad, seeing U21 and recent former U21 archers stepping up to earn their caps, showing that our investment in the U21 Pathway is paying great dividends. 

First up on Friday, however, was the opposite end of that spectrum, with the Dynamic Duncanson’s, Pam (540) and Kevin (573) leading the line for compound. Both put in a great session leaving them in strong positions that Saturday archers would find tough to match. 

Early next morning alongside a host of other archers from Scotland, Shay Boyd and Freya Rennie set out the Scottish stall for recurve and barebow, respectively scoring 549 and 427.  

The afternoon session started with some debate as Josh McMillan’s barebow was initially deemed illegal, but after a quick reconfiguration we were good to go. In the afternoon session, the final eight Scottish archers put in their numbers, with some great performances, helping several of them to make the cut for the later head-to-heads. Pick of this group was Erik Rowbotham with a great recurve 559 and Fin Clark only a point behind teammate Kevin on 572. Alongside this was an amazing performance from U21 compound archer Olivia Kendal who, despite not having made the full squad, made the cut for compound, and went on to push world number one Ella Gibson to the last end in the head-to-heads. 

From a Home Nations competition perspective, England outperformed the other nations in every bow category, with Scotland 2nd in compound, 3rd in Barebow and 3rd in Recurve but bringing in enough points to leave with 2nd place overall. While this is a little disappointing given the talent that is emerging, there is great consolation to be taken from the individual medals collected by our Scottish team. Our team spirit was certainly unrivalled, and it was great to see both the team and other Scottish archers supporting everyone at the line.

Congratulations to Kevin (CM50+ silver), Pam (CF50+ silver) and to Scottish Archer Frank Hynds (RM50+ silver). Thanks greatly to Fin (p17), Faye (p34), Freya (p5), Erin Ann (p17), Rafail (p17), Josh (p45), Erik (p17), Shay (p17), Lucy (p17) and Debbie (p6) and all the Scottish archers that flew the flag and acquitted themselves well.

Alba air adhart! 

Ainsley Ward