Scott Williams (Wales Archery Specialists Sponsorship Team Captain 2024) - 

One of my earliest memories is being shown by local school kids how to make arrows and a bow about 4” long with a cotton string on the small island in the South Pacific where I grew up. I was at Primary School and we used to hunt wasps. A few years later and I was gifted a wooden bow larger than me and arrows with wooden blunts to practice with. Years later back in Devon - I brought the bow with me but it broke eventually. I took up the crossbow for a while, before switching sports as a teenager to concentrate on windsurfing and dinghy racing.

I didn’t come back to archery until my Forties, when my daughter went to a have ago, loved it and wanted to learn to shoot, so it became our ‘dad and daughter’ thing. We sailed through the beginners course - she went to recurve, and i plumped for a Grozer Scythian bow - learning thumb ring through joining the SPTA (Society for the Promotion of Traditional Archery) where I loved all the different traditional competitions - Roving Marks, Field, Flight, Popinjay, Surs, horse(less)back archery, and studied the Way of Archery. 

At club level I had no competition shooting a ‘horse bow’, so bought a longbow, but kept the Zen ethos and went about putting my name on all the club records, and then most of the county records. I even had a national record for the Vegas, and I’m so thankful to have inspired a lot of Devon and Cornwall archers to take up the longbow competitively. 

Once I achieved Master Bowman I was invited to the Masters and realised there were longbow archers who were extremely proficient. I always wished to gain sponsorship with Wales Archery Specialists and achieved that in 2018 (thanks Wales Archery folks) and in 2022 I have finally achieved the ranking of Grand Master Bowman.

Going forward:

My claim to fame is I've shot a five gold end at 90m (and I'd love to achieve a six gold end with the longbow). 

I've been a regular in the county (Devon & Cornwall) team since 2008, and was also part of the team that won the National Team Tournament 2018 in Longbow at Lilleshall and came 3rd at my first Masters. I'd love to win one of the new style medals at Lilleshall.

There’s stiff competition across the West region between the Wales Archery sponsored longbowers shooting our Gary Evans bows, making it a highly competitive season, hopefully I can keep my place in the top 10 Gentlemen in the UK and I'd love to improve on my bronze at The Masters. 

I'm currently the County's Longbow Field Champion 2021, and got off to a good start in 2022 becoming the GWAS (Great Western Region) Indoor Champion 2022. Having been classified a Grand Master I'd like to remain one for as long as I can. I'd also like to achieve a Gold Rose, and get into the top 5 ranked longbow archers in the UK, and inspire more archers to take up the longbow in the region.