DESPITE not being at her best in the early stages, Braintree Bowmen youngster Imogen Newby added yet another title to her list of achievements.

This time it was on the county stage at Rayleigh as the 13-year-old became the Essex FITA under-14 ladies' recurve champion with not just the highest score in her age group, but the biggest female points tally of the day overall.

However, the Braintree Bowmen member didn't have things all her own way and she admitted that she had a "shaky" start to the contest.

She said: "I managed to get set up early for the competition and my sighters we great once it started.

"I opened my scoring with a 57 at 40 metres so was really pleased, but the next couple of ends somehow didn’t work.

"I’m not sure what went wrong but I think it was my fingers were touching the nock (the notch cut into the back end of the arrow where the bowstring slots) and I hit a random score of three.

"That wasn't good but I managed to come back and finished the 40 metres strongly and the 30-metre distance was then good.

"It was a shaky start but I felt I had finished well.

"However, my scores didn’t seem to be great overall so decided to not chase any scores and to relax and enjoy the shoot."

It was a tactic that worked as in the afternoon session, Newby said she "nailed it" at the 20-metre distance with plenty of high-scoring golds being hit on the target and she was just as solid at the closing ten-metre distance as well.

It meant the Halstead youngster finished the day on 1,341 points that saw her win gold to become the Essex FITA Under-14 Ladies' Recurve champion.

There was also a strong display from Newby's Braintree Bowmen club-mate Sydney Strugnell at Rayleigh.

She was competing in her last Metric V competition before going up an age group from the under-12s and was looking to finish with a good score.

Strugnell progressed well and was just one point off her personal best (PB) at the end of the 30-metre distance, however, things didn't go to plan at 20 metres and the Braintree youngster ended up nine points off her PB at that distance.

She was still on course for an overall PB, though, and kept that going in the afternoon at 15 metres, before a flourish at the end saw her smash her ten-metre best by ten points to finish with a final score of 1,331 that was six better than her previous overall PB.