In this newsletter: |
| State Indoor and State JOAD Indoor Awarded After considering several bids, the Archival Archery Board has awarded the State Indoor Championship responsibility to the University of A' UT Archery Club. It will be held on the campus of UT, near 26th Dean Keaton St and Whitis, in the Anna Hiss Gym over the February 2-4th weekend.  (click on pics for larger images)For full information including the usual online registration form, please use this link. There are a number of links on that page which should answer any questions you have. If not, the page also has contact email addresses and phone number.The State JOAD Indoor will be held in Columbus and will be hosted by the Colorado County 4H JOAD Shooting Sports Club. Information and online registration is located on this link's destination.  Both facilities promise to provide us with a fairly central location in the state, thereby improving attendance. Each venue has several shooting times available so that it should help reduce time conflicts, especially for the JOAD archers with their busy school schedules. NOTE: The annual Archival Archery general meeting of all members will be held after the Saturday afternoon line is done, around 5PM. Please send anything you wish to have placed on the agenda to the secretary, Gina Carmichael. This includes nominations for board officer positions and topics of discussion. |
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| Aya's 2005 Calendar Aya LaBrie created a calendar late last year and sold copies of it through the Internet to help finance her archery endeavors.  As 2004 winds down and you start wondering what to give as a gift that keeps on giving through the year, to that archer you know, it's good to have her 2005 calendar as an option! Aya is very talented as an artist, as these images used in the calendar show. She has created all of them herself, and they get a lot of favorable reviews. The calendar can be ordered by going to this link, check it all out, and then email AYA.. She has decreased the price from last year, to $14.99 each. This includes shipping in the continental US, and she can ship to countries outside the US as well. You should check this out now, since Christmas approaches rapidly! |
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| SPECIAL ARTICLE: How to Choose and Use a Youth Archery Coach There may come a time when your child shows significant potential as an archer and you find that you cannot help them anymore. It is time to find a mentor or coach for your child. This article is written to help you choose a coach and then assist you in how to benefit the most from that person.How to Chooseby Tom and Chelsea Barker We suggest you approach hiring a coach like you would hire a nanny or housekeeper. You are interviewing them to steward your child. You should look for basic credentials such as NArchival Archery certifications, feedback from other parents and youth archers they work with and perhaps experience as an archer. There are very good coaches that may not have the highest certifications or be the most accomplished archers, yet they can do wonders with youth archers. There are others that are very accomplished and highly certified, but may not be able to communicate well or have a demeanor that is not ideal for working with kids in a role model position. It is best if you can see them work in order to judge the quality of fit. By quality of fit: Does this coach meet the style that is best suited for your child? While this may get a chuckle, there are definite differences in coaching approaches with girls and boys. Some coaches are “in-your-face” kind of coaches with a very results-oriented style. Others are more process oriented and collegial in their style. With some students a mere suggestion is all that is needed. Other archers have to be convinced to try something new. We prefer the process oriented approach because in most circumstances the youngster has choices and is doing archery for fun. A more directive approach can turn off many youth archers who are unsure or unconfident. The objective is not to win the super bowl or go to war, so a more relationship oriented approach is tried. There are times to be authoritative with youth archers especially when they are high-performance and goal-driven, but we suggest that this only comes after a strong student-teacher relationship has been established. The coach must ensure that the archer is willing and able to improve. How to Use Your CoachOnce you have a coach in mind, you should communicate your expectations and boundary conditions. You are the customer here. Sure, there is some give-and-take in the negotiations such as fees, timing and schedule. But, there are some things that are non-negotiable and should be settled up front. For example: if the child is experiencing pain from some aspect of shooting, shooting stops. Once the sessions begin, you and the coach should be working together. This requires good communications on homework, expectations and goal setting. One role for the parent is to reinforce positives and minimize negatives. For example, there usually is a decline in initial performance when the archer begins trying new things the coach is suggesting. The parent can help allay fears that the youngster might have. It is sometimes difficult for young people to understand that things might get worse before they get better. A good coach will report accomplishments or tasks that are being worked on during practice after each lesson to keep you informed to further support the child. It is sometimes hard for the parent to give up their old role as coach/parent and just be the parent now. The new parent role is chief cheerleader and auditor. If you find yourself in conflict with the instructions the coach is giving the youngster, it is time to discuss it with the coach away from the archer. It can also be detrimental to try and augment the instructions the coach is giving because the youngster may not be ready for that part yet or it can overload them. One of the most trying times for parents is at tournaments. Tournaments are when everyone gets to see the results of the work the coach and archer have put in. Sometimes it can be an improvement, but frequently it can indicate more training is needed. Guy Krueger once mentioned that how an archer performs in tournaments only indicates if they are ahead or behind their training schedule. One of the hardest things for a parent to do is to let the coach be the coach at a tournament. A coach should have the ability to maintain a collected demeanor to keep the archer calm and focused on the task at hand to help the archer with their mental game. This is essential to the archer’s performance, especially at a big tournament. Parents, while coaches understand your feelings, it is easy to get caught up emotionally with how your child is doing and if your child sees that anxiety, it can be detrimental to their mental game. In crucial moments at a tournament, it is often beneficial for the parents to watch from a bit of a distance and let the coach have the contact with your child at that point. The child can still see you and knows you are watching and encouraging (give them a big thumbs up or something visual to encourage them). All the archer is looking for from mom and dad are unconditional support and reassurance. It is enormously comforting to the youth archer to know that all I have to do is shoot because if anything goes wrong, I have my coach and my parents behind me. As parents, it is important to reinforce positives, such as personal bests, good shots, improved form, a positive attitude, or good sportsmanship. We should de-emphasize score, placement, poor shots and mistakes. If any person shoots long enough, a “bad” day is bound to happen, but with the right approach, it can be turned into a learning event and made into a “good” day. If you want your child’s coach at the tournament, you should expect to pay for that. But here is what you should and should not expect. Do not expect a lot of “coaching” to occur at a tournament. There is enough stress at a match already. Your coach may make minor suggestions about shot execution to reinforce what they have been working on, but do not expect major changes here. In all honesty, a tournament is not the place to do that. Please do not feel that just because the coach is not changing things in the middle of the tournament that you should fill in the gap. The coach is observing and making mental notes about things to work on for the next sessions. The coach pays attention to how the archer operates and approaches each shot mentally during practice and can influence the thought process in a positive manner that is specific to your child. Do not expect your coach to watch every single shot of your archer. They are looking for other things from other archers that might help your child. They also want to see how independent the archer is. Have they learned how to adjust their sights, how to shoot in the wind, and how to interact with other archers on the line? A good coach will work to give the student independence in those areas to give them confidence in their abilities early on and to have them involved in all aspects of shooting because it is not just pulling the string back and letting it go. All of those skills are just as important to learn without help from the coach or parent. Expect your coach to be an additional cheerleader and to support your archer at a tournament. The coach should positively reinforce the things that have been worked on in practice that are going well Finally, there may come a time when a good coach comes to you and says that he or she cannot help your child anymore. This is a good coach who knows his or her limitations and will be useful in helping your youth archer find a new mentor. This can be tough for the archer who sees the old coach now as friend and confidant. But it helps if both the coach and parents explain to the archer that they are not replacing the coach, as children may fear severing that relationship. They are instead adding to the team, just as when the original coach was added to the team. about the authors: Ten years ago Tom started in archery when his son, Kevin, was 8 years old. After a year after watching her brother have all the fun in archery, Tom's daughter Chelsea said, “I can do that.” They all started shooting with the Goliad County 4H archery project and later founded the South A Archery JOAD group. Tom's passion has been youth archery because of the life skills that can be taught through archery. Tom is an NFAA certified coach and a NArchival Archery Level II instructor and has mentored hundreds of youth archers. Chelsea shot as a JOAD archer for eight years and put her bow down in order to obtain a degree in exercise physiology at Baylor University. She will perform her graduate work at A Tech starting the summer of 2005. She has conducted summer camps and continues to mentor both recurve and compound archers. She is a NArchival Archery Level II instructor. |
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| National Archery In Schools Arrives In A NASP: National Archery In Schools Program by Norm McMinn They do not know it yet, but the kids in A are about to have a great time at school. What am I talking about? NASP. The National Archery in Schools Program.  This program began in 2002, in Kentucky with 39 educators from 22 middle schools trained and certified on March 3-4, 2002, as NASP level one instructors. These instructors implemented NASP in their schools the following school year. Sixteen hundred students (55% boys and 45% girls.) from these 22 schools were surveyed before their 2-week target archery class. Of these students 72% did not own a bow and 62% had never shot a bow. After the Class they were surveyed again and: 89% enjoyed the archery class; 45% wanted to own archery equipment; 59% wanted to become target archers; and 38% wanted to try bow hunting . Kentucky held their first NASP State Championship in 2003 with 651 students competing. Twelve months later (with many, many more KY schools participating) they had their second state championship with an astonishing 1,291 students competing. What a wonderful time in archery history! What a fantastic beginning of what is yet to come! The next competition is already scheduled to be held in conjunction with the NFAA NATIONAL INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIP in Louisville, KY in March 2005. NASP is a joint venture between State Education and State Wild Life Departments to promote student education and participation in the shooting sports. The program's focus is to not only provide Olympic-style target archery training in K-12 physical education classes but to incorporate ARCHERY into other subject areas as well (math, history, language arts) thus promoting greater student interest. The Department of Wild Life's concern is the declining participation in the shooting sports which threatens financial and public support for wildlife conservation. The NASP is designed to teach archery skills to 100,000+ students per state each year. We expect many of these young people to become archers and archery supporters. The Department of Education is using this tool to reduce the national school dropout rate (currently 10%). Most students (88%) who drop out of school indicate they were not involved in any extra-curricular activities. Archery taught by the NASP is accessible to all students. Educators are reporting that the NASP "engages the unengaged" and inspires students to greater achievement in school. At this time 49 states and 14 countries have inquired about the program. Countries and Canadian Provinces include: Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Iraq, Japan, Spain, Finland, Morocco, and Barbados. Sixteen states have adopted the program: KY, AZ, AL, GA, WY, WVA, AR, IA, IL, OH, OR, OK, MT, MI, MN, and TX. An additional 13 states have committed to implement the program over the next few months: TN, LA, SC, WI, IN, NC, FL, NV, PA, VA, NJ, NE, & MS. This is the most rewarding thing I have ever done--teaching the boy who could not compete in other sports because of his wheel chair--or the girl who could not run as fast as the others on her soccer team. This is a life long sport everyone can become involved in--short, tall, skinny, heavy, and with almost any disability. The schools have reported back that this is the most inclusive event they have ever had. NO ONE IS LEFT OUT! If you would like more information on how to get this started in your school or to be a volunteer please contact me via email.Read More: ESPN Article.... Alabama's Success...A High School Tournament of 1400! ... Testimonials From Teachers NADA Website |
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| WIT! It Is World Indoor Trials Time. The Olympiad has come and gone so it must be time for the World Indoor Championship. USA Archery (aka the NAA) has released a bulletin with information on the World Indoor Championship Tournament. There will be a TRIAL tournament in A to discover which US archers go to Denmark to represent the US! This represents a great opportunity for archers to gain valuable competition experience with very little travel expense. First, a paragraph from the USA Archery bulletin: The 8th FITA World Indoor Championships will be held in Aalborg, Denmark from March 22-27, 2005. If you are interested in representing the United States at this prestigious event you must participate in the World Indoor Trials, which will be hosted by the A 10’s Archery Club in Hillsboro, A. ****** No qualifying score is required to participate in this Trials Event. ****** **** NArchival Archery and/or NFAA Members are eligible to participate. **** Note that you do not need to pre-qualify for this event! You just pay the fee and stand the line! (at the right time, of course) Hillsboro is about an hour directly south of Dallas/Fort Worth, and is loaded with hotels, antique stores, and outlet mall stores. If you want funding for the trip to Aalborg, though, you need to have registered two official scores of a certain amount by January 15, 2005 and you also will need to be one of the top two finishers in Hillsboro. In a nutshell: The NArchival Archery is holding the trials for the World Indoor Championship on January 13-16 in Hillsboro, TX. The prize if you place high enough in these trials is a trip to Aalborg, Denmark!! And for those that don't shoot, Hillsboro has more than 200 antique stores as well as a HUGE outdoor mall complex of 85 stores that rivals anything in Southern Florida, and it hasn't been completely under water lately, either! Chamber of Commerce webpage for Hillsboro is at this link. |
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| 2005 National Indoor Championships As in previous years, the NAA's 2005 National Indoor Championship tournament will be held in a number of venues around the country, on FOUR successive weekends. For those planning to shoot in College Station the date will be February 18-20, and this is the link to the information there. Regardless of which location you want to shoot at, though, everyone will need this Adobe Acrobat registration form from the US Archery website. Note that each Region's venue has its own mail address for submitting the registration form and fee. Also note that with the event spread over a month of weekends, the final results will not be available until at least the last week or so of March, depending on how quick each venue sends the certified results into the NAA. Finally, for those wanting to shoot in College Station, please remember how popular CS is on the weekends, and try to book your hotels AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. (they have set aside a number of rooms with the Manor House - check the info on the links above) |
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| Coach's Tip - Laser Level or Bow Alignment Aid? by Ron Carmichael If you want to insure that your limbs are properly aligned with the riser on the center of the assembled bow, you can buy a laser device called an "Easy Eye Laser Gauge" that attaches to the riser's sight screw holes, for around $70. Or, after Christmas and provided you drop suitably precise hints to Santa Claus, you can use a Black&Decker laser level to project a red line from overhead towards the face of the bow from center of one tip, to the other center of tip, and verify whether the red line is perfectly on the bowstring AND on the center of the riser/limbs. Use two chairs set back to back but a little further apart than the riser's length, to suspend the bow with the face (string side) up. Put the level on a bookshelf or tripod so that is directly above the center of the bow.  You can also use this device to set your centershot by using a little care in setting the level slightly to the side of the bowstring. The way the B&D projects a flat line over an area lets you create a perfectly flat plane of light that can bisect the string and the riser/limbs. The Easy Eye will project a beam that can be pivoted, so they work a little differently though both will create a perfectly straight reference. I must give credit for thinking of this neat application for the B&D to watching Spike TV and to eating Ben&Jerry's Raspberry Avalanche ice cream at the same time. |
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| A Shootout 2005 Registration & Info Now Posted The OUTDOOR season has just begun. It's not too early to start planning for the A Shootout. If you haven't been to the Shootout before, you'll want to read up on the event at the link below. People come thousands of miles to shoot at this event, so surely you can drive a couple of hours! It's a well run, well supported, well attended, well, it's a well done event!  The A Shootout is one of the biggest and best organized events in NArchival Archery Archery events and has grown steadily in popularity. This year will be just as good, hopefully, and the folks at A A&M are graciously hosting it again. This is one of those official "ranking" tournament events that will attract a whole passle of good arrow flingers. You can check the information on the tournament, due to be held on April 1 st through 3rd, at This Link Right Here.There is a registration form off of this link. The deadline is MARCH 7th for registration to this event. It is a good idea to book your hotel as soon as possible since they are almost always full, even now! Check their website for hotel info as well. |
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