Striking Competition Results 2023 (and comment about 2020-2022)

We held our first striking competition for four years on Saturday, 3rd June 2023 at Stretham, 6pm in the evening. Due to the pandemic of Covid-19 leading to the ceasing of in-person bell ringing from March 17th 2020 until effectively late summer/autumn of 2021, no striking competitions took place. The ringing community was in 'lock-down' and unable to meet together in order to practise. When ringing did take place again it was with reduced numbers of people and preferably at towers with ground floor rings or good ventilation. Many bands were depleted in numbers either due to infirmity or lack of confidence of some ringers having had such a break from ringing. Therefore the ability of bands to strike well or ring methods was reduced.

Since this June 2023 competition was the first Ely District competition since lock-down we wanted to encourage as many bands as possible to enter! Therefore we relaxed the rules for entry.  As usual there were two classes - call changes and methods. For the call changes class, bands had to ring 10 different call changes but there was no need to include Queens, Kings and Tittums. Also we allowed an external caller in order to encourage bands to have a go. We also relaxed the rules for scratch bands - these were for anyone who wanted to come along and have some fun and take part in a performance piece of ringing, but didn't have their own band. Scratch bands were allowed in both classes. We allowed people to assist early stage ringers in scratch bands and people could therefore ring in more than one band. Trophy entry bands took precedence over scratch bands where time was limited. Only trophy entry bands could win the trophies!

All teams were marked on 120 rows. There was a 5 minutes practice allowed before signalling to the judges that bands were ready to start their performance piece by ringing the treble solo for two whole pulls. Otherwise normal rules applied: https://ely.elyda.org.uk/district-information/district-striking-competitions. 

Dee Smith organised the competition and her instructions may be useful to future organisers!!

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Judges: Paul and Ann Seaman – booked and looking forward to the event

Refreshments: Rowan is kindly putting on a Ringers tea of savoury items, including tea coffee and squash. Please liaise with Roderick who was going to bring drinks. This will be charged for the usual price of £2.00 (adults) and £1.00 (juniors) These will be served in the meeting Room, or if a nice day outside.

PLEASE COULD ALL COMMITTEE MEMBERS BRING EITHER A LARGE CAKE OR SMALL CAKES/BISCUITS – SHOP BOUGHT ALLOWED!

Other Activities:

John is bringing his Plain Hunt Activity, I suggest to be done in an area away from the kitchen and meeting room.

Conrad is bringing his ‘Pin the Clapper on the Bell’ – could this be done in the porch? Does this have a prize for the winner?

I will be bringing a quiz ‘Name that tower’ (John I am sure ringers will not cheat and use their phones!). This will be marked before the results. Do we need a prize for this?

Raffle: PLEASE BRING SOME PRIZES! Someone will need to do the raffle.

Trophies: Sorted and being brought to competition

Draw and Stewarding: Catherine is doing this, and I will help as the it will be rather manic sorting out the teams, especially the scratch teams and who is going to ring what. We will also need to advise the judges about number of teams in each category.

Catherine, please bring something to do the draw with for all 3 competitions.

We have had a few requests for order of ringing, to be sorted on the evening.

Advertisement: Lesley has sent out a reminder through the mailing list:

(Conrad has advertised on Face Book)

Previous Striking Competitions:

2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010