OK, so it's fairly straightforward and well within the abilities of someone with basic numeracy skills, but why does filling-in an archery scoresheet seem so tricky? Granted, I am fairly new to the game but I make some very basic errors that reduce my final score. A good example was my recent Short Metric I round, where I had only one scoring end at 50m : 44MMMM giving 8 points. What did I do? Only used the Hits column instead of the end total, robbing myself of 75% of the points at that range!
I can think of a few good reasons why this could have happened and I would be very surprised if more experienced archers reading this do not recognize at least one of them. The first is that I took over scoring duties after the initial scorer retired through injury; the ends had not been totalled at that point so I filled them in. Secondly, it was perishingly cold and intermittently raining. It seems that my brain really doesn't work very well in inclement weather. Thirdly, my scores for this distance were: MMMMMM; MMMMMM; MMMMMM; MMMMMM, 44MMMM; MMMMMM - I think the two hits somehow had a much larger significance than the actual scores, so I subconsciously used 2 instead of 8. Finally, I didn't have this much trouble before I picked up a bow myself, and did the scoring for Mrs EA and EA jnr, so I can only conclude that my 'men cannot multitask' genes are having an effect.
Joking aside (yes, that mutitasking comment WAS a joke!), it is very different scoring at the same time as shooting a round yourself; there are so many more things to think about: am I missing high or low? Where did those missed arrows go? What did I score? Does my sight need adjusting? Is 50m a step too far with an 18lb bow? Why did you not pick up the scoresheet from the waiting line? When will it be Spring? etc....
Scoresheets themselves seem to be set out to bamboozle you, too. Who has not written the second end of a dozen underneath the first end instead of to the right of it? Some scoresheets have a row per end, which confuses the poor beginner even more. Not to mention columns for Hits, 10s, 10+X, X! Sure, it will get easier over time, but it is perplexing at first.
I have also learned that accuracy is essential not only in recording and totalling scores, but also in providing details of the round, otherwise the club Records Officer is liable to be using a lot of red ink! Recently I shot a Junior Warwick round and thought I had done reasonably well. Unfortunately I had circled Short on the scoresheet, and added an annotation jnr so it was recorded as a Short Junior Warwick and I was given the appropriate handicap for that round. Why did I circle Short? I first thought this round was a Short Warwick (so I circled Short) but was then corrected that it was a Junior Warwick, so I added the Jnr annotation but forgot to delete the circle round the Short.
Of course, all of this can be easily avoided by using a smartphone app and using that to record your scores. Unfortunately, this can only be done in addition to paper scoring, not instead of paper scoring (at least at my club), so just introduces one more thing to do (see male mutitasking, above). I did try it on one round when I was not scorer, but managed to delete the whole round when attempting to edit one end, so it is not infallible.
I guess I am resigned to the fact that this scoring business will become second nature over time and not to get too wound-up about it. Any errors will get lost in the overall statistics over the years, and will certainly lose the significance they have now.
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