Oxford Shot Down
The Cambridge team made full use of their home advantage for this year's Varsity Archery encounter. Despite Oxford's performance, they surpassed the winning margin of either of the past two years' Varsity matches.
An excellent performance by Oxford just prevented a record-breaking Tab victory.
Oxford's leading competitor, Christopher Buckingham (Lincoln), whose haul of 831 points out of a possible 972 earned him a half-blue, was pleased with the team's showing, but also paid credit to the Light Blues' performance: "It was disappointing because Oxford shot really well, beating Cambridge's winning scores of 2003 and 2002. However, the Tabs did shoot spectacularly well this year and so all credit to them."
Oxford had approached the competition as the underdogs and expected a fierce contest after being heavily defeated in last year's Varsity match.
Keen to make the Varsity match more competitive this time around, they started brightly with a memorable personal best of 812 points from Cath Roberts in her round.
Yet they were to be denied by the Cambridge outfit, whose top quartet increased the standard from last year's competition by racking up nearly 90% of all the points available.
Other creditable half-Blue performances came from Oxford's Antje Frotscher and Geoff Hyett, who achieved 824 and 720 points in their respective rounds.
20th May 2004