Team rounds wrap up at World Youths in Ireland

LIMERICK, IE – Today marked the conclusion of the team rounds at the World Archery Youth Championships in Limerick, Ireland. The recurve U18 teams got the chance to step up to the shooting line.
The 17th-ranked U18 recurve women’s team was first up on the docket. Janna Hawash, Audrey Khan Arevalo, and Zohy Wilson composed the group that was first up against the 9th-ranked team from Moldova. While the Canadian squad was able to maintain the lead and win the first two ends, their opponents came back to win the last two ends to tie the match at 4-4. This meant that the match then proceeded to a tiebreaker round. The Canadians shot strong but lost the tie by two points, 22-24.
In the afternoon, the attention then turned towards the U18 recurve men’s team, made up of Kurtis Ng, Sahil Sahota, and Ryder Wilson. The opponent was the team from Japan, which was 6th-ranked coming into the matches. The men continued to give their best effort throughout three ends, however, they were unfortunately unable to overcome their opponents and dropped the match 6-0.
When asked to comment on today and yesterday’s team rounds, Duncan Crawford, one of Canada’s coaches, commented that “The U18 ladies got off to a strong start against Moldova, going up 4-0, however, the Moldovans fought back, tying the match and sending it into an extra end. They put us out but not without a valiant effort. The U18 men came up against a very tough Japanese squad and went out in straight sets unfortunately. Our compound U21 women lost a very gusty match to Chinese Taipei, the U18 women suffered the same fate when shooting against the Mexican ladies. Our U21 compound men lost to the Slovenians, and the U18 men lost a nail biter by 3 points to the Slovakians. There were rookies on each squad and despite the initial disappointment, we had a great team-wide debrief and some excellent training sessions. The entire squad is staying focused and supportive and maximizing our short time together on the practice field. Spirits are high going into tomorrow’s individual compound matches.”
“We capped off a long day with a fun dinner with all of our visiting families at Scholars Pub; a mix of traditional Irish fare and good pizza,” continues Crawford. “As we write this, a high stakes game of ‘elimination spoons’ is happening in the campus theater to a backdrop of lively Celtic music! The coaches are truly enjoying our time with this squad. They are a great bunch of athletes committed to future development.”
The competition continues tomorrow with the compound individual matches. The first match begins at 9:10 a.m. local time (4:10 a.m. ET) tomorrow morning, with four of our compound male archers shooting at that time.
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