Manx archery sisters Aalin and Kirsten George have been included in the Great Britain squad which will compete at the European Outdoor Youth Championships next month.
The event takes place between May 19-24 in Ljubljana, Slovenia and will see more than 300 archers from around the world taking part.
The Cavendish Scholarship recipients’ inclusion follows a selection shoot of the UK’s top youth archers at Lilleshall recently and they will be part of a team of 12 male and seven female archers in both junior (under-20) and cadet categories (u17) in recurve and compound categories.
The athletes will compete in both individual and team events at the Stožice Hippodrome, which is situated just outside Slovenia’s capital city Ljubljana.
Great Britain is sending the third largest team to the championships and Aalin, 18, will be representing GB in the compound discipline alongside 12 other archers.
She will be joined in the women’s junior team by Sophie Brown and Erin Prior.
Kirsten has been selected as part of the women’s cadet compound squad with Lucy Mason and Isabelle Carpenter.
Following the qualification round, the archers will compete in a head-to-head event which is run in the same format as the Olympics/Paralympics, with a 70m target for the recurve archers and a 50m target for the compound archers.
Lloyd Brown, Olympic coach of Archery GB: ‘We have high hopes for our team at this event.
‘It gives them a chance to shoot against the best archers in their age group, which will tell us exactly where they are at and whether the training in the off season at the regional performance academies has paid dividends.’
The European Outdoor Youth Championships has been held since 2000 and is organised by the European World Archery Federation.
For more information or to follow the girls’ progress at the European Outdoor Youth Championships visit www.worldarchery.org