Halstead archery ace Imogen Newby reinforced her position as one of the country’s top young talents by taking double silver at the Junior National Outdoor Championships at Lilleshall.

The 11-year-old Braintree Bowmen member has had a meteoric rise through the national rankings since first picking up a bow in 2012 and was hoping to better the eighth and tenth places she achieved last year at the national championships in the under-12s section.

She was shooting a Metric V round on the first day and a Bristol V round on day two, with 144 arrows in each round at a variety of different distances to the target and knew it would be tough to claim a podium spot against the best young archers in the country.

Her biggest rival was Caitlin Aiken of Buchan Archery Club, who had finished second last year and proved to be in good form at this year’s event.

With Great Britain Olympic team coach Lloyd Brown keeping a close eye on the progress of the youngsters, Newby, who is a pupil at Chappel Primary School, began well and was second behind Aiken after the opening 30 metre shoot in the Metric V.

The Braintree ace narrowed that gap with a superb display at 20m that gave her a national record claim and went on to finish with a total score of 1,351 to take the silver medal.

Aiken finished just 26 points ahead and the pair went head-to-head in the Bristol V round the next day.

The end result was the same, though, as Aiken once again took gold, but only 14 points ahead of Newby this time as the Braintree youngster finished with a score of 1,262.

She was delighted with her twin individual silver medals, but Newby was also part of collective success as she earned FITA Regional Team gold and Bristol Imperial Regional Team gold as part of the Southern Counties team alongside a Bristol Imperial County Team gold medal as part of the Essex and Suffolk team.

Newby said: “My goal was to win, but unfortunately I got beaten by Caitlin Aiken.

“It was only by a couple of points, though, so I was really happy.

“I was happy with my performance and I was pleased to get two new personal bests.

“All the GB coaches were there and they were asking how I was getting on.

“It didn’t really affect me and really gave me a boost as I just wanted to perform well in front of them.

“I was a little bit nervous, but mainly excited and determined to do well, so I’m proud of what I did and I then found out I had got three golds as part of the teams.

“That was totally unexpected and a really nice surprise.”