A young Burnham-On-Sea archery enthusiast is celebrating success after winning a top national title – taking him a step closer to his dream of competing in the Olympics.
Darragh Joyce, 12, a student at King Alfred School and a member of the Burnham Company of Archers, took part in the UK Junior Masters Archery Tournament held in Oxford over the weekend.
The invitation-only event is open to those archers who gained their Junior Master Bowman classification during the previous year.
The event is run along the same lines as the Olympics, in that the archers first compete in a ranking round.
In Darragh’s case the target was 40m away and from a total possible score of 720 he scored 657, ranking him first.
Following the ranking round the archers then compete in knock-out head-to-head matches and in these, two archers shoot against each other, each shooting 3 arrows per end of scoring.
If one of them scores more than the other, they are awarded 2 points, and if they draw they both gain one point.
The match is decided by the first to reach 6 points. As Darragh had ranked first he was awarded a bye into the semi-final.
He won his semi-final 7-1 and then the final 6-2 against the number 2 ranked archer.
“This win means that he has been on the podium in all 6 national outdoor tournaments that he has competed in over the last three years,” says father Adam.
“Later this year he will compete in the UK Junior Nationals in July, before travelling over to Ireland to compete in the Irish Junior Nationals in September. His goal is to compete at the Olympics.”
