On Sunday 8th March, the University of Birmingham was host to the BUTTS Indoor Championships, taking place within the Munrow Sports Centre. The BUTTS league was established in 1995 and is the most competitive student archery competition in the UK, featuring thirteen universities. Included in this group are Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick and the league founders, UoB. Events took place across the entire day from early in the morning until the evening, with over 200 archers involved in the prestigious student competition.

Organising such a spectacular student-run event takes hard work and dedication. ‘This does take a lot of planning’ says Pam Qualing, who was the tournament coordinator.  ‘We’ve been planning this since September of last year. We put an event proposal through to sports development and it is up to them as to if they think it is worth doing. For us it was a case of it’s a 25th anniversary and we did start the league. We wanted it to come home back to us because it was such a big event and it’s so important to the club as a whole.’ Convincing sports development to allow the BUTTS to run is an incredible achievement, showcasing the quality of the competition as well as the passion the University of Birmingham Archery Club have for their sport.

BUTTS has allowed universities to come together like never before, working as a huge community. Qualing also states ‘we’ve had teams from other unis come and help us with things that weren’t going quite well’, emphasising the respect between all the teams taking part. UoB archer Phillippa Taylor also comments on this, declaring that ‘it’s really brought a family atmosphere together. It’s been really nice to shoot on home soil as well.’ Unfortunately, there were some printing issues on the day but, with the help of other universities, this issue was and the day was able to run very smoothly.

Taylor has also competed in the Summer World University Games, showcasing the level of quality BUTTS attracts and creates. She comments ‘It was really amazing to be around world-class archers there. We had the world number one of our category there competing against us and current Olympians that are going into 2020 as well.’

Chris Avins is another archer who has competed internationally, taking part in Veronica’s cup in Slovenia. It was at university where Avins seriously took up archery, stating ‘I did a lot of music before so I wanted to do something fun on the side and slowly as I went it was so fun to learn the process and realise there’s so much more behind it.’ The sport is now central to Avins’ life and he earned a bronze in recourse archery on the day.

Attitudes were positive going into the sessions, with archers competing in good spirit and making new friends. One person who agreed was UoB archer Megan Abra, claiming that ‘it’s quite an enticing environment because you have the time between ends to chat with people and it’s quite relaxed.’ Across the centre, archers were having fun and working together to ensure the day went ahead as planned.

BUTTS was important preparation for many of the archers, with BUCS Indoor Finals taking place on Saturday 14th March at the University of Warwick.