WINDHOEK – Namibia’s leading archers Louw Nel and Beanta Viviers, were victorious in the compound men and women’s categories at last weekend’s AFRO Pumps Archery Shoot, at the SKW sports grounds in Olympia, which marked the official opening of the 2014 season.
A total of 30 archers from all over the country participated in 11 different categories. As always, the participants had to shoot a round of 720 during qualification, measuring how archers are ranked for the elimination round that followed shortly afterwards. It was in the qualification round that Nel made his presence felt, collecting a total of 659 points with veteran Francois Marais the only archer to achieve better marks when he accumulated a fantastic score of 664, followed by Ruan van Staden on 656 points.
Both Nel and Marais cruised through their first elimination round where the pair came face to face against each other and this time, Nel had the upper hand over his rival in what was the closest contested encounter over the entire tournament. Both archers collected 134 from a possible 150 points during the initial shoot-off. In the sudden-death shoot-out that followed, each arrow could mean the difference between victory and defeat. And as both archers hit the 8 on their target, it was Nel’s arrow that was closest to the X to give him the win to book a place against van Staden who had won his semi-final match against Johan Wessels. And although van Staden put up a great display, it wasn’t enough to edge out Nel who secured his first title for the season. During qualification in the women’s compound division, Viviers made no mistake to get her name on top of the score sheet with 616 points and was followed by Ilana Malan on 606 with Liezl Schoeman adrift with 559.
After an impressive showing in her semi-final tie against Mia Nel, Viviers moved to the final where she came up against Malan to claim gold with 132:130. The compound cadet in the men’s category was won by Mynhardt Beukes who edged out Hendrik van Eeden in the final with 136:129, while Harvey Park won the compound master men’s division, beating Moritz Hoff in their final with 124:118. Meanwhile, Xander Reddig, who was awarded a universality place for this year’s Youth Olympics in Nanjing/China, shot only six points under the qualification score and though the 15-year-old is not quite there yet, the Archery Association of Namibia (AAN) is confident that Reddig will continue to improve and qualify on time.
Other winners were as follows:
Compound U-13 Girls
1. Hanné Snyman
2. Quinn Reddig
Recurve Men
Peter van Eeden
Recurve Cadet Men
Xander Reddig
Recurve U-13 Boys
CF Brandt
By Staff Reporter