Well done Kay!! ..European Paralympic invitational event

[BlackAxis]

Last weekend saw the first ever Eurpoean paralympic invitational event held at Stoke mandiville, The event was a great sucess with over fifty competitors taking part. Great Britain, Swedan, Poland, Finland, Italy and the Ukraine were all represented. The event was put together by the GB team Manager David Hilton, who in turn recruited myself to provide a work party.. I inturn called upon the archers I coach at Birmingham Universty. At this point i would like to thank those from Brum Uni who helped.. they did sterling work and considering they had never worked as a work party before produced excellant results , receiving compliments (and often team shirts!) from the competitors..the italian competitors seemed especially pleased/attentive with the attendance of the three ladies in the work party!</p>

Pictures of this event can be viewed on the Severn Archers Web site www.severnarchers.co.uk</p>

On a more personal note..</p>

This boards own Slartibartfast (Kay) got news that she was eligable to shoot in the event (her first ever international) on the Friday#(halfway through practice day) and was straight into the ranking round on the Saturday afternoon...#Kay discovoured that being her first international shoot and with the majority of the GB Squad and team mangement watching she does after all suffer from slight nerves!...#Kay got off to#a shakey start... things soon started to settle down for Kay and the arrows found there way back to there rightfull place in the centre of the target. The afternoons efforts culminated with a well earned Silver medal.</p>

Next day was the Head to head round, Kays second place on the previous day earned her a bye in the first round, going straight into the next round against an archer from the Ukraine, again#a shakey start for Kay, but a strong finsh saw her go through to the Gold Medal match.</p>

For this match Kay was pited against an archer from Poland, after the first end Kay was 1 point behind... i think at this point i lost all of my finger nails! Kays hours of long practice &amp; hard work paid off#as she came through to a very strong finish,#beating the polish archer by over 10 points.#</p>

So to cut a very long story short (sorry for the long post) Slartibartfast in her first ever international event Picked a silver medal in the qualifying round and a gold medal in the head to head, just to top things off she was also awarded a Gold medal for the BWAA champoinships being co -held the same weekend.</p>

........She did smile somewhat.....Im sure if a few people on this board (come on clickerati) gave her some encouragement she could give a better acocunt of the weekends efforts ##### over to you kay#..# Well Done </p>

BlackAxis</p>

[Little Miss Purple]

Well done Kay, keep the flag flying for female archers in the UK!!! Here's to many more medals / trophies to be collected within the forum.

[TJ Mason]

Congratulations on the medals, Slarti. They'll look great next to the awards for your fjords!

[Radiant]

<font size="2">Well Done Kay!!!!! You deserve every bit of it.

It was a brilliant event... and a long one for us work party. Everyone seemed to have a really good time and i hope that it will encourage more events of its kind.

(and thanks for reminding me BlackAxis.. those pictures will be up by the end of the day...)

Radiant </font></p>

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[BlackAxis]

<span class="postbody">come on now Kay dont be shy....dont save it for the private mesages..knows not the time for modesty .. we know your normally so quiet

tell all from your perspective...

Many thanks Radiant .... didnt mean to pre-empt you... got a bit excited

BlackAxis (master yoda)
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[Armchair Archer]

Congratulations, slartibartfast !!!!!!All you need now is an AI fonz award, LOL

[BlackAxis]

<span class="postbody">For all those interested the piccys are now posted on the severn archers website...

www.severnarchers.co.uk

Click on

Photo's

Then..
2005 Paralympic Grand Prix Event

comments to be added later.....

BlackAxis.... aka master yoda
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<span class="postbody">ps thanks radiant for the prompt posting of the pics....now get back to work ;)</span></p>

[slartibartfast]

Thanks for the support guys and gals

Wow what a weekend! Yes coach you were right after all, i did suffer from nerves, should of known you would be right not me. The good thing is i now know that i can shoot just as well with nerves. The more i shot the more confident i became. I learnt a lot of things on the weekend (No. 1 is to listen to your coach).

There were a number of first's on the weekend for me. I started to lose a bit of confidence in my ability after a truly shocking 1/4 finals match but did as i was told and used the lunch time to work on my form and relaxing muscles that had very slightly started to tense. I felt phisically sick at this point but once on the line it all goes away. I didn't know i had finnished. There was only the target, me and one arrow. The thing that gave it away was the Ukrane coach comming over to shake my hand and then it was "who won?".

The scariest thing of all was standing on the podium with loads of people taking pictures of me, i'm not what you would call photogenic.

[Dave]

Yay Well done Kay Clicky, post some cake here immediately

[secbridarchers]

Well done Kay, great result. CONGRATULATIONS