Hundreds of arrows are set to fly at Martin’s Field on College Rd this weekend for the inaugural Middle Town Classic 720 archery competition.
It is the first high-level tournament the Timaru Archery Club has hosted since Covid.
The tournament aims to serve as a way for local youth archers to gain qualifying scores for the trans-tasman competition in Christchurch this September.
Timaru Archery Club committee member Jen Campbell said it was important to be able to hold the tournament in Timaru.
‘‘To get selected for a New Zealand team you have to shoot at three different locations throughout New Zealand and get the qualifying scores.
‘‘In the South Island we only have Christchurch, Invercargill and Dunedin that can host tournaments and of course the North Island have a lot.’’
Timaru was a small club without judges or directors of shooting, she said.
‘‘Because the Christchurch Archery Club will be hosting the trans-tasman they have offered to help, and we came up with the idea of running a tournament here to help our archers seek selection.
‘‘We have a judge from Christchurch coming to run it and we also now have two judges from Dunedin coming up.’’
A lot of effort goes in to being able to officially run a tournament, she said.
‘‘Part of the requirements of hosting a tournament is you have to have the field set up right, you have to have the target to world archery standards, you have to have all the correct signage, distance markers, etc.
‘‘My father, Dick Guard, has been amazing.
‘‘Over the course of the last couple week’s he’s been making up all the signs for us and Mark and Alana from Brand Boost Solutions have been busy getting them all made.
‘‘My father has also made up all the flags that sit on top of our targets and made sure they are up to the required height.’’
Ford Timaru were even providing a marquee, she said.
‘‘We are also of course, very thankful to Timaru Girls’ High for letting us shoot on their field and host the tournament there and the Christchurch Archery Club for all of their help.’’
She said several top-level archers would be competing in the tournament.
‘‘We have three New Zealand representatives attending, we have our own Zac Campbell, as well an U21 rep and an open woman’s section archer.
‘‘We’ll have a good number of adult shooters too and some youth archers coming from Christchurch and Dunedin to get scores since this tournament will also give them another qualifying venue.
‘‘There is a limitation of only 10 targets here so at the moment we have 23 archers as we can only fit a certain number on each target.
‘‘There will be a good selection of archers, we have compound, recurve, and barebow archers, shooting from 35m up to 70m.’’
The arrows will start flying from 10am on Saturday with a 720 round in the morning followed by a lunch break and another 720 round in the afternoon.
Spectators are welcome to attend at no cost.
