Teenage Archery prodigy sets up Go Fund Me to afford travel and accommodation to represent Great Britain
A teenager has been called up to represent Great Britain in an indoor archery competition, but is struggling to fund it due to having to pay for the trip herself.
Evie Finnegan, 19, from Lytham St Annes, has been selected to represent Great Britain in the 2026 European Indoor Championships in the Under 21s category in Bulgaria.
Evie has recently been chosen to represent her nation in Plovdiv for the competition where trips are completely self-funded.
A GoFundMe page was set up explaining her financial situation, she managed to reach her goal of £400 so she could attend the competition in February and continue her rise in the sport.
“Archery is not a mainstream sport like football, so the self funding events are really difficult because it is hard to get that funding.”
She has competed at local, county, regional, national and international levels. Evie has also accumulated over 400 Lancashire, northern counties, national and European archery records.
As she is still a student at Myerscough College in Preston, she is only able to work part-time, so has found this difficult to fund her archery dream.
“You don’t really get a lot of downtime; I’m at college three days a week and working four nights a week.”
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She previously got the idea for the GoFundMe from her teammates and had previously set one up in 2024 to fund her trip to Croatia for another competition.
“I was honest about my situation and how I needed a little bit of support with it”.
As it stands, bare bow archery is not currently in the Olympics: “If obviously bare bow was in the Olympics, I’d love to go.”
Evie also plays Cricket which is also a sport that does not get a lot of sponsorships and funding for young athletes.
Young and upcoming athletes in the UK struggle with getting funding for their sport. It is difficult to get sponsorships at such a young age. “I’m quite lucky, I got quite a few sponsors for my equipment.”
“The self-funded events are really difficult because you could be paying thousands at a time.”
In recent years funding for grassroots sports and young athletes has increased dramatically and risen up to £213.2 million in investments which is a huge benefit for all young athletes wanting to achieve their dreams of becoming a star.
Evie believes there still needs to be “media based archery promotions” which will help get more young people into the sport and help with the funding of clubs.
The funding that Evie managed to earn herself has allowed her to compete in several competitions around the world.
Archery Competitions – Previous results
- European Championships Under 21 – Second place – February 2026
- British target championship – First place – October 2025
- Tour finals – Third place – September 2025
- National indoors – Sixteenth place – December 2025
- Cheshire county – First place – June 2021
