For this year, Rick Stonebraker has found a source for TYVEK JACKETS. Tyvek is a wind-proof, water resistant paper that makes a wonderful over-jacket for warmth. It blocks rain as well as wind. It is as light-weight as possible, durable, very strong and resists tearing very well. It is great for traveling - you can fold it up, ball it up, or just stuff it into a bowcase, and it is comes out wrinkly but ready to wear.

The Archival Archery is going to make an order of these inexpensive, recyclable Tyvek Jackets. White with black trim. The example shows a stock item with runners/Houston for an example. The Archival Archery logo that appears on the other side will actually be where the Houston/Runner logo would be. We will include an embroidered archer on the back that is about 8" to 10" tall (see example)

These are embroidered and so will look very nice. We would like to do this very quickly so the A archers can wear them to the world indoor championship in early March. The manufacturer has agreed to work quickly provided we turn in the order ASAP.

The jackets are sized small so add 2 sizes when ordering. For an example: Rick Stonebraker, Kevin Barker, Tom Barker will wear a 3XL. These jackets are light, strong, will shed water, retain heat, wind resistant (not breathable)and can be folded into a pocket. Great for emergencies and can be worn while shooting during cooler, windier tournaments. They are STYLIN'!!!

Tyvek is not machine washable and never use an iron - hand wash and drip dry.

We will place this order within a few days so they will be available in time for the Texan World Team members can take them to France. A VERY FEW extras will be ordered in case someone doesn't get this message.

Cost is projected to be about $27-$28. The price will depend on how many of you take us up on this project Since it is dependent on quantity, the more of you that sign up, the less they will cost. We will NOT be toting these around to tournaments in order to sell them as we did with the T-shirts. Hopefully they will arrive prior to the State Indoor and if they do we will bring them to the tourney.

If you wish them mailed to you after that, expect to pay an additional $4 or so. You can place your order now, and we will send you an email when the exact cost is found after all orders are in. You are on the honor system here - you place the order, you are promising to pay for the jacket when it arrives.

Again, we are under a time-constraint, as the Archival Archery will be furnishing these jackets to our internationally-bound archers (World Indoor Team members headed for Nimes, France). If you want one or a couple of these yourself, then you need TO ACT RIGHT NOW.

For any parent wishing to be able to help their child be a better archer. For any archer wishing to understand better the underlying principles and mechanics of archery, and thereby become a better archery. For anyone planning to wrangle kids at a summer camp next year. For the inveterate Sagittarian!
This new Level II course is going to be held in March. Level 2 Course Announcement
NArchival Archery -Archery Instructor Certification

Where: Austin, A (University of A campus- AHG indoor range)
When: March 14-16th, 2003 (Friday evening, all day Saturday and Sunday)
Cost: $100 / person (includes all materials)

Description: The Level 2 Archery Instructor Course is designed to train and certify instructors to teach group archery classes, JOAD programs, college programs and Level 1 Basic Instructor courses. Participants must be NArchival Archery members and eighteen (18)* years of age or older. The course is a 30-hour activity. Certification is valid for three (3) years.
* Course may be taken in the calendar year of your 18th birthday.
Prerequisites: None (Level 2 manual and other materials will be provided).

The team will be traveling to Nimes, France March 2 to compete in the World Indoor Archery Championships. Kevin is a member of the elite 24 member United States archery team and one of only three nationwide in his age division. Kevin also represented the US as a member of the Junior World Outdoor team that traveled to the Czech Republic last summer.

Also making the US team was adopted Texan and Olympic medallist Vic Wunderle. Vic has continued to perform at a world-class level since achieving a silver medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Guy Krueger of Blessing, A and formerly of A A&M joins Vic on the Senior Men Recurve team, along with another member of the US Olympic Team from Sydney, Richard (Butch) Johnson. Dawn Chudy and Cassandra Raffaelli of A A&M both made the team as women recurve and compound archers, respectively. In all, seventeen states contributed archers to this team. Way to go Texans!!!

The recent issue of the NockNock had a calendar of upcoming events, and the A Shootout was ignored (not the first time). Left out. Not there, nor was the Shootout mentioned in the summary for 2002 on the front page of the issue. With all of the cutbacks and staffing changes, I'm sure that the NArchival Archery office is running very short-handed at this point.

The 30-year old law in America that has taken women from "1 in 27" athletes in school sports, to more like 1 in 4 or so, is currently being reviewed for elimination by a presidential "blue ribbon" panel that was apparently purposely selected for their likelihood to vote for its demise. Despite the fact that even today the majority of elementary, middle, high school, and colleges are not in full compliance with this law Title IX has caused a huge improvement in the gender balance of sports.

For example, in recent Archival Archery archery events there has been a ratio of 2 women for every 3 to 5 men. Yet for kids, there is a nearly 1 for 1 ratio. This is in large part because young girls are NO LONGER told "you can't", whereas the senior ladies who do shoot had to fight tooth and nail for legitimacy and opportunity back when. As the kids of today grow into adults, we can expect the senior ratio to become more "normal" as well. But losing the sheltering, promotional, nurturing benefits of Title IX may very well stem this growth or even allow a return to the good ol' days we've only just begun evolving from.

The downunder programmers of TargetPlot, Trevor Hancock & Marianne Rieckmann, have been busy. As you may know, these archer-programmers in Australia make a program for the hand-held computer for archers (and actually for all shooting sports). They've sent me a copy of a program that's to be released today. They think it is for Tournament Directors of Shooting, and while they are right, that's not all it is for.

First, a few pictures from my Handspring Visor:

This works best on a color Palm or Visor or Clie, but it also works on monochrome displays. (It's just not as purty). It lets a DOS (hence the name, ArcDOS ) time the shooting lines for a tournament. Allows for the walking up to the line period, the green shooting time, the yellow light time, and the red stop shooting time. allows for lunch times. It LOGS it all. It beeps at the right times, just like a whistle by the DOS, so you could hold it up to a PA. Now, this $21 (US) software is a great alternative to the stop watch for a DOS. But wait! There's more! It's also a handy-dandy pacer for the archer! It SLICES, it DICES (time), and it polishes your arrows! (well, not that last thing)

As part of Lindsey's physical therapy routine, she has to work with resistance on a timed pace - Raise the weight up slowly for 7 seconds, hold it for 7 seconds, lower it slowly over 7 seconds, rest 10 seconds, then repeat. Do 20 reps. With ArcDOS, I can easily program this to count each interval, then beep each timed event over and over. marvelous.

In the past I have worked with Lindsey to learn to shoot at a slow and deliberate pace. I've found for example, that she makes her best shot when she takes no more than 5 seconds from start of draw (that's after the pre-draw) to click. If she takes longer she can still make a good shot, but the odds decrease slightly. So I've actually made like a metronome, counting out loud when she starts to draw. Quietly, steadily, one, two, three, four, ..... and during these exercises she focuses on her pace, not on where the arrow goes. Interestingly, her arrows stay in the gold just as much as when we are not doing this.

So if I set ArcDOS to beep on each second, and beep twice at the desired endpoint, say 5 seconds, it makes a pair of beeps at the end of the sequence.

ArcDOS is being released now as ArcDOS Lite, which does what I described. The next version will have A HARDWARE INTERFACE so that the Palm device, sitting in its serial cradle, will drive a set of large timer displays for use by the archers on the line - red/green/yellow and/or a countdown timer.

While the final price for the packaged deal hasn't been determined it will be likely be reasonable and available as both a "built" and a "plans only" version.