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This weekend saw the 30th and Final Student Festival of Sport held in the Island. The only surviving sport in the Festival was archery and the IOM Archery Club hosted a two-day indoor competition in the main hall at the NSC for 63 archers from four universities, an alumni group named PRISM (Perpetually Returning to the ISle of Man) and four IOM Junior archers. As usual the competition was fierce but friendly with Recurve, Compound, Barebow and Longbow archers all shooting and no fewer than six new records were set over the two days. Appropriately the winning team taking the IOM Archery Club Cup home with them was PRISM. Three of these archers have been attending the Festival for fourteen years and this group has been instrumental in promoting the competition over the years.
On Friday evening a dinner was held at the Empress Hotel as a tribute to the late Geoff Corlett who started the whole idea of a Student Festival and saw the first one held during the IOM Year of Sport in 1985. Guests of honour were Geoff’s wife Jean and daughter Shirley, and numerous friends, colleagues and students recounted their memories of this remarkable man and his contribution not only to the Festival but to sport in general in the Isle of Man. Peter Mumford, Chairman of the IOM Archery Club gave some facts and figures from the archery competitions over the years. Budgetmann Tours and Travel, who have been responsible for organising the Festival over the years donated a cup to the Isle of Man Archery Club to be known as the Geoff Corlett Memorial Trophy and it was announced that as Geoff so enjoyed working with junior and upcoming athletes, this would be awarded annually to the Junior archer who showed the most improvement on handicap during the combined indoor and outdoor seasons.
Thanks go to all who have helped to run this competition over all the years and in particular to all the Club members who have given up their weekend every year to help stage the contest.
Team Results were as follows: PRISM 5392, Oxford 5288, Loughborough 5146, Liverpool 4676, Lancaster (one archer only) 1017
