The public service announcements highlight seven athletes who are 2004 Olympic hopefuls, including a pair of past Olympic medal winners.

“These public service announcements were developed to showcase athletes, who work hard, elect not to the use of performance-enhancing substances and compete with the spirit of the sport in mind,” said Madden. “We anticipate that these PSAs will provide an encouraging message to athletes of all ages and abilities throughout the nation that you can succeed and live a healthier life without the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The relationship between an athlete and sport is special and worth protecting.”

Shot putter John Godina (Northridge, Calif.) and weightlifter Tara (Nott) Cunningham (Mt. Pleasant, Mich.) are two of the featured athletes in USADA’ s PSA campaign. Godina and Cunningham are pursuing additional medals at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Godina collected a bronze medal at the 2000 Olympics and a silver medal at the 1996 Olympics, while Cunningham won a gold medal in the women’s weightlifting competition in 2000.

Godina and Cunningham are members of the USADA Athlete Ambassador program, which involves current and retired athletes contributing to USADA’s educational programs.

Softball pitcher Jennie Finch (La Mirada, Calif.), track cyclist Giddeon Massie (Bethlehem, Pa.), kayakers Jeanne and Marie Mijalis (Miami, Fla.) and archer Guy Krueger (Blessing, A) are part of the PSA campaign, and vying to represent the United States at the 2004 Olympics. Biographies on each of the seven athletes involved this campaign can be found at the end of this release.

The public services announcements were produced by Industrial Park, a New York-based production company headed by Jackie Bisbee. Mike Dignum and Audrius Barzdukas of Los-Angeles-based Chaos coordinated the spots, while Michael Schenk produced the PSAs.

We had beginners, intermediates and advanced archers. The Victoria county 4H archery project hosted and the Coastal Bend JOAD clubs sponsored a fabulous weekend of youth compound archery.
Michael Braden, professional archer, outstanding teacher and all around nice guy was the lead instructor.

Adam Guiggesberg, United States Archery Team member, assisted Michael with equipment modifications while Tom Barker, Dale Garner, Shelby Fischer, Randy Morgan, Brain Heinsohn, Mellisa Ceballos and Mark Lesak helped with instruction. T.C. Baker, Kevin Barker and Marcia Barker did the video taping of the kids while John Bradley took scores of digital pictures. Denise and Michael DeBord, Kathy Heinsohn, Tammy Pizzitola made sure the kids were hydrated and snacked up. Todd Janota and Danny Miller cooked hamburgers for the multitude. Janet Lesak headed up the registration and name tag distribution.  

Saturday morning was a little slow while the kids were broken into groups to shoot, be video'd and show what their current form was. The concern was to make sure the kids were not "shot out" by the time they got their turn with Michael. We felt it was important to do the pre-analysis to record the baseline and for the future understand how much they had improved. While some groups were shooting, others watched video tapes of compound and recurve archers.  Everyone broke for lunch at noon to refuel on those hamburgers.  

After lunch Michael spent some time talking and showing proper compound archery form. Everyone worked on their own individual shot sequence. About 2:30 everyone got up to shoot. Michael worked one on one with everyone until about 7:00PM when he got through with most of the archers. While Michael was working with a couple of archers, the rest of the instructors were reinforcing what Michael had told them.  Sunday morning Michael shot a little and talked about aiming before finishing up with the few kids that didn’t get their one on ones Saturday evening.

After this we took a short break and then went back to analyze and video every archer’s “after” form. It was amazing how much the youth archers had improved. Many were shooting consistently in the yellow due to the improved form. About 11:30 we wrapped up the camp with a brief discussion on goal setting and adjourned at noon.  The camp evaluation forms confirmed what I had seen and heard; we hit a home run with this camp.

Everyone wanted more time with Michael (especially some of the instructors) and each and every archer felt they had picked up some important improvements in their form. In the words of several kids, it was “Sweet!”

Also, we are fortunate enough to receive a few pennies each time someone follows the small boxed advertisements you might see on some of our web pages. These are guaranteed by Google to be family-safe, and they are "targeted" only in that the ads usually have something to do with the words on the page itself. Since we are all about archery the small text links (NO GRAPHICS and NO POPUPS!) usually deal with archery or else public service organizations. Cool! So if you see something that catches your eye, please check it out.

We'll have more on this in the next issue, including a public acknowledgment here for each and every donation made (unless you request anonymity).

Apparently the FITA organization has issued a new set of rules about dress code at Championship events. They are due to go into effect on April Fool's Day but there is no foolin' about some of the measures included. If they are implemented in your NArchival Archery and Archival Archery events you will have to make some changes to your wardrobe. Sandals, Socks, and Hats, Oh My!!!

* AZJOAD will host the 2004 Arizona JOAD Outdoor Championship - Mark you Calendar, the dates have been changed to April 24th and 25th, 2004 at the Ben Avery FITA Range. Less than 90 days away.
(The date was moved to avoid the only High School SAT college entrance exam date that did not in conflict with national tournament dates) This is the 2004 Arizona’s Outdoor championship for JOADs and all JOADs are encouraged to participate. Seniors and masters are welcome and invited to participate in the Star FITA event. The event is a two day FITA