SRCY retain Trinity Shield in National Devon Call change challenge

After a year's break, the National Devon Call Change Competition took place on the 19th of September, 2009. This year the format was slightly different, in that there were two "legs" to the competition, a 6-bell competition held at Drewsteignton and an 8-bell competition held at Chagford.

As we had not entered an 8-bell competition before there was some practice that was needed before the main event. We held the occasional practice at the end of the normal Wednesday night practice, and when we arrived on the Friday we had a practice at Ilsington, followed by three more towers on Saturday. This ensured we well and truely ready for the competition.

We found Chagford quite a challenge, and with the help of some local knowledge in advance we found a strapper for the tenor would not be a bad idea. Fortunately Ian VJ Smith was ringing for another team and was able to help us out for the raise. Fortuantely for us, all the other teams found Chagford a bit of challenge as well, but as we had to shoot off to Drewsteignton we didn't know at the time how some of the other teams would fair. Some of us had been to Drewsteignton in the past, so when we got there and rang the 6-bell peal we got in to our rythmn very quickly and we were very happy with the ringing we produced. But would the judges think the same?

After heading back to Chagford for the results we found out how the competition was going to work - the results of the 6-bell and 8-bell competitions would be read our seperately, but the overall result would be a cumlination of faults scored from both competitions. After a very quick service the judges from each competiton came out and gave the results as follows:

6-bell competition results

8-bell competition results

Overall results

* These teams also qualified as non-Devon bands and competed for the 'Trinity Shield'.

Needless to say we were very happy to come second in the competition, and how close we were to Eggbuckland for the 6-bell competition. As we were the higest placed non-Devon team we also retained the Trinity Sheild.

Many thanks to Ian Fielding for organising the SRCY entry in to the competition, as well as for all the practices leading up to it.

The bands:
6 bell (Drewsteignton)
1 Ian Fielding
2 Shirley McGill
3 Cath Merlane
4 Ian Mills
5 Olly Cross
6 Peter Harrison

8 Bell (Chagford)
1 Ian Fielding
2 Shirley McGill
3 Cath Merlane
4 Jason Turnock
5 Tom Waterson
6 Ian Mills
7 Olly Cross
8 Peter Harrison