Stephanie Croskery takes aim during the Archery New Zealand outdoor championships in Flat Bush, Auckland. She was fourth in the women’s 50-metre target competition and, with Manawatū archer Gary Coleman, second in the mixed team 50m target matchplay.
Stephanie Croskery takes aim during the Archery New Zealand outdoor championships in Flat Bush, Auckland. She was fourth in the women’s 50-metre target competition and, with Manawatū archer Gary Coleman, second in the mixed team 50m target matchplay.
Gisborne’s 2010 Commonwealth Games archer Stephanie Croskery attended her first outdoor archery nationals in 14 years and came away with two top-four placings.
She was fourth in the women’s 50-metre target competition and, with Manawatū archer Gary Coleman, second in the mixed team 50m target matchplay. Both werecompound bow events held at Rongomai Park in Flat Bush, Auckland.
Compound bows use cables and pulleys to bend the bow limbs, offering advantages in speed, power and accuracy.
Gisborne Archery Club won the Fraser Shield interclub competition. Its presentation was to have been at the championship-ending banquet on Saturday January 24, but the Gisborne contingent had left early to start the road trip home by way of Napier.
Archery club president David Croskery, father of Stephanie, said conditions during the nationals were “terrible”.
Rain came in sideways and part of the shoot was called off because the wind was too strong, but Stephanie Croskery persisted.
Gisborne archer Stephanie Croskery in her New Zealand team uniform before heading to India for the 2010 Commonwealth Games where she placed ninth out of 32 in the women's individual compound bow and fifth in the compound bow women's team event. Croskery is back pursuing the sport she loves. Photo / Rebecca Grunwell
“She has only just come back to archery,” David Croskery said. “She went to the Commonwealth Games [in Delhi, India] in 2010, when she was 19, and then trained as an early childhood teacher. She lived in Auckland and Wellington, and did the odd shoot.
“She’s come back to Gisborne and started competing again. She’s been shooting since she was six years old ... it’s her happy place.
The Fraser Shield competition was shot in November and December, with the winners announced at the nationals banquet.
“It’s been going for decades and we’ve won it in the past, but not for a long time,” David Croskery said. “It makes us the top compound club in the country.”
Gisborne Archery Club’s team members for the shield competition were Stephen Mann, Stephanie Croskery, Chloe Underdown-Rickard and Allan Rogers.
The club’s opening day for the year will be on Friday (Waitangi Day), when two postal shoots – held at different venues with results collated – will be run at the club’s outdoor range on the Gisborne Intermediate School grounds. They are the Hutton Memorial Shoot and an Eastern and Central Archery Association competition.
