The information and online registration form for the State JOAD Championship will be posted soon on the Archival Archery main page. For now you can plan on time and location:
it will be on June 28 and 29 in Ganado, A.
It is timed to be a good warmup event for the NATIONAL JOAD CHAMPIONSHIP, which will be very close to A for this year, in Oklahoma. (See below).

There is also another warmup event (for the JOAD National event) to be held in A, and it's going to be on June 7th in northeast A, in Tyler, the Rose City 900. This event is being sponsored by the city of Tyler, and they will pull out all the stops!

FINALLY, AND THIS IS IMPORTANT, THE DEADLINE IS JUNE 1ST! - the USA ARCHERY's 27th JOAD NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP will be held in Oklahoma City this year on July 10 thru 13th. It rotates around the country, and this is about as close to A as it will get until one of the JOADs in A decides to sponsor it, so you and your kids should really plan to go!

Please don't miss this event - the attendance at this event has a big impact on the importance with which the rest of the archery community views the youth archery movement. I am also certain that a good event like this has a huge impact on the choice that a young kid will have on whether she (or he) stays with the sport. I'm not saying the kid has to finish on the podium, what I'm saying is that this tournament has such a good, fun, positive effect on ANY kid that is allowed to shoot it in his or her own way that it "locks" the kid into the idea that they can shoot an arrow, well, forever.

Arizona Cup	results	Photos
A Shootout	results	Photos
A State Field	results	Photos
US Olympic Trials	results	(includes the news release from USA Archery)

They just do it with fewer arms, legs, or with other physical impediments
(inconveniences, some of them would say)

I'm proud to note that my daughter, Lindsey Carmichael, will once again be a part of TEAM USA and will represent the US as its sole paralympic female archer in Beijing. She has worked very, very hard over the last two years to recover from both physical injury and Target Panic, and I hope that her 5th place finish at the A Shootout qualifying round signals her return to serious competition despite carrying a full course load in her double-major at the University of A. To read the just-posted news release from the USA Archery website, please use this link.

To view a 360 degree photo of the Beijing archery venue for both the Paralympic and Olympic competitions, check this link out please. A great trailer for the Beijing Olympic's Archery can be seen on youtube at this link. Archery TV will probably broadcast 24/7 coverage of both the oly and para archery competitions. For some neat archival footage of the Atlanta Olympic Archery Comps take a look at this link.

You should probably log on and subscribe to the postings of archery.tv - you get to see a LOT of archery, and much of it includes excellent narration by George Tekmitchov, Hoyt Engineer who has had a major impact on many, many aspects of archery including announcing at many of the top competitions in the world over the last 10 years, as well as in the design and creation of the "Tek" line of Hoyt risers.

And of course, last but not least, the Olympic Team of archers for Beijing 2008 has been selected after a very arduous series of competitions held during three separate qualifiers around the United States, culminating with a shootout at the Ben Avery Archery Range north of Phoenix, Arizona. For the full results, final rankings, and brackets, please check this link.

There has long been a special page for exemplary video and high-speed video of archers that I have collected from archers around the world - all with the consent of the photographer where possible. Much of it predates the youtube phenomena, and I note that most or even all of it has since been taken by others and "youtubed". But the original high-quality files remain for your enjoyment and education.

Starting with the A Shootout 2008, I have switched from taking only still photos and rapid-fire sequences, to full color, high speed video clips of archers on the line. These video clips are shot in 300, 600, or even 1200 frames per second (fps). This means that a single second of "life" might take 10 or 30 more seconds to play back! So the archer can examine technique in very close detail, and can choose to download them to their own computers. The only drawback is that the video file becomes much larger in size, so if you use a dialup connection each file takes much longer to view.
In the thumbnail pages I post to the website, you can tell which thumbnail photos in an index page lead to a video - there is an image of a filmstrip in the upper left corner of the thumbnail. This example of Lindsey Carmichael is an example - when you load these videos it will take your computer some time to load the video player and download the (larger) file- be patient. When you click on such thumbnails, an icon for the QuickTime player (a large "Q") may appear while your computer downloads the video file. Once it is downloaded, you can pause the playback and then use your computer's arrow keys to step back and forth, frame by frame. One neat aspect of the vides is the occasional arrow you see flying to the target in the background. When I am working with archers and using this as a teaching tool, I emphasize this: These videos will show the slightest flaws and it is important that the archer keep in mind that the video is also showing a lot of very good technique and proper form - do NOT let yourself (or your student) get stuck on just the flaw, enjoy all of the good form and method the videos show!

Since starting to use JAlbum about a year ago, I have also included the original high-resolution photo as well as an easier-to-view-online lesser quality photo. Let your mouse hover over the middle of the regular image, and you will see a tooltip pop up with the link to the original image and it will also tell you the size of the original image. Click on that area of the photo and you can then download the photo to your computer to print, to make as your screensaver or slide show. If you have a question, feel free to email me. Ron Carmichael

Recently, USA Archery asked me to attend a youth sports conference in Colorado Springs. The conference was titled Pipeline Leadership for America’s Youth Sports and was sponsored by the United States Olympic Committee.

The idea was to get people from the various Olympic sports and talk about best practice techniques and what works and doesn't work in attracting and retaining youth in sport. It was an awesome opportunity for me to learn from other sports experts and also to share with others what we are doing in youth archery.

The paradox of the conference was that the yardstick by which these organizations are measured is how many Olympic medals their sports win.

Conversely, it was universal that for the younger athletes, the competitive aspect of sport has to be de-emphasized so that the basic value of participation, basic sport skill development, and simply having fun can be the priorities. It was a refreshing perspective that something I thought was intuitive was actually embraced by so many high performance sports advocates.....

TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE PLEASE.