RU Archery honours George Scales
The Rhodes University Archery Club paid tribute to George Scales – a man to whom they arguably owe their existence – at Sunday’s annual George Scales Championships.
The event, which was contested by archers from all across the province, saw local stalwarts such as Yashin Naidoo pick up gold medals, while a development round for new archers proved a closely fought three-way contest.
The Archery Club has turned into one of Rhodes University’s most prestigious sporting bodies. However, before they could turn into what they are today, they had to fight to be allowed to shoot on campus.
Previously, archery in Grahamstown was limited to the Albany Archery Club. Numbers dwindled and around the turn of the millennium, the club had reduced to just three archers.
One of them, George Scales, was mugged and shot on the Albany Sports Club’s archery range in 2000, dying from the wounds. At this point, his friend and fellow archer, Mike Wisch, approached Rhodes University and told them it was time for change.
Wisch argued that it was unsafe to shoot off campus and requested that Rhodes allow them to move on to their premises.
Thus, Rhodes Archery was formed, and according to Wisch, it has since become the biggest archery club in the Eastern Cape.
The annual competition in Scales’s honour has given him a measure of immortality. Not content with merely gifting him naming rights, the Archery Club added a development round to ensure that the structure of the competition honoured his legacy.
Now the club’s captain, Wisch explained: “(Scales) was the only real coach left in Grahamstown at the time… He actually got a lot of people going who moved on to other towns and carried on archery elsewhere… (The development shoot) was part of his legacy – keeping his legacy alive and introducing the sport to new people.” • All the results in Know the
Score on page 24.