Rather than hosting a basketball game or a track meet, Gosman Sports and Convocation Center was used for a far different purpose this past Saturday.

The Archery Club hosted its second-annual Shamrock Shoot, a distinct event in the Northeast in part due to the attendees and also the competitions that took place at the event.

Dustin Aaron '14, president of the Archery Club, stated his overall satisfaction with his club's event this past weekend.

"All things considered, it was small but highly successful," commented Aaron.

"This is our second year running it, so we had a lot of experience last year and we learned how to make this a decent competition, so everything ran really well.

"It was not as highly attended as we had hoped-about the same as last year-but in terms of quality we got really lucky."

The Shamrock Shoot featured some of the top archers in the country, aside from Brandeis students.

"We had a No. 1 ranked in the world men's compound shooter, a recent gold-medal winner in the Indoor World Cup a month ago, a team silver medal winner, and another former top archer in the world which was really great," Aaron said.

The Shamrock Shoot has been in development for quite a while, and finally, it is starting to take off in just its second year.

"This had been something that had been in the works even before I was here," Aaron explained. "Even to just host a tournament at Brandeis is an amazing fundraiser for the team and it's great exposure and unique, and what ended up happening was we had an opportunity to bring even bigger names but constraints on the tournament didn't allow it."

The competition is the only 70-meter indoor competition in the United Sates thus far but is styled like an outdoor competition, making it an attraction for all types of archers. Aaron mentioned that a smiliar venue is currently being built on the West Coast, and would host a much larger competition than the Shamrock Shoot.

"Archery competitions come in two forms, indoors and outdoors," explained Aaron. "The beauty of our competition is that it's an outdoor style competition held indoors. Being in New England lets people shoot a little bit earlier than they would [have] otherwise.

"That's the main draw," Aaron said. "It is the only indoor 70-meter competition so far in the United States. For now it's a great appeal to New England."

Aaron explained that shooting indoors allowed archers to begin shooting while the weather was still cold and the outdoor ranges unavailable for use.

The tournament gave each competitor four minutes to fire six arrows at a standard bull's-eye. Each of the bull's-eye's concentric rings is given a specific point value with the center standing as the most valuable target. The competitor, meanwhile, stands at a distance depending on their bow to attempt their six shots.

Aaron explained that competitors at the Shamrock Shoot used two types of bows; recurve bows and composite bows.

Recurve bows, made of wood or carbon fiber, have a single string on which the arrow is mounted and are more closely associated with the classic bow and arrow.

Conversely, compound bows are larger bows with multiple strings and wheels at the top and bottom allowing for quicker and more accurate shooting, making them the preferred bow for hunting. Aaron explained that most of the Archery club uses recurve bows.

The Archery Club, much like the distinctive event it hosts, stands out as well.

"As a collegiate archery team we straddle two different halves of the world," Aaron said.

"There's the collegiate competition and the national competition, so we technically belong to two governing bodies, collegiate archery and national archery."

Aaron explained that the Shamrock Shoot attracted archers who were competing on their own merit, completely unattached to a college or professional team.

"When we run something like this, we do it as a national archery body so we have people coming who are completely disassociated with a college and everyone who shot there shot as an individual, including the few people who shot from [the] Brandeis [team]."

Since the competition was an individual event, only the top Brandeis competitors actually took part on Saturday. However this did not detract from the overall experience of the day for Aaron.

"If this was a collegiate tournament we'd all be shooting, but since this is an individual tournament, we put our top shooters in the competition," Aaron continued.

Aaron explained that the team had an intra-team competiton on Friday to determine who would shoot on Saturday, but stressed that overall he was proud of the direction of the Archery Club.

"[As a senior] I really feel like there's a strong base left behind with the team and I honestly expect great things because we're still on the up. Every year we get a little bit closer, we win a little bit more.

"Hopefully in years to come this will grow, that's the goal," he said. "We got off the ground last year, we did it right this year, and hopefully in the future we'll do even better."