In this newsletter: |
| Staten Holmes - Texan Archer Staten Holmes recently returned from the World Indoor Championships in Poland - he competed there for the US, shooting recurve.  Staten shot with huge success as a JOAD youngster many years ago and also shot for A A&M while in college, again winning everything in sight and helping to establish A&M as an archery powerhouse which continues today. When he decided to go to pharmacy school, he put the bow down so that he could focus on the demanding course load. After going to work, his wife led him to pick a bow up again and he re-discovered the joys and rewards of shooting. He was very competitive for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Team. Even though he didn't quite make it, his recent shooting performance in Poland was certainly "WORLD CLASS," as he and two teammates (Vic Wunderle, also a A Aggie, and Brady Ellison of the ARCO OTC) took gold in the team event by defeating the highly regarded Italian team. Friends and kin held a welcome home party for him at the local range where he often shoots, and a local TV channel sent out a crew and did a real fine job covering the event. It's nice when the media actually get it right, as they did in this story. |
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40th U.S. National Indoor Tournament  The 40th U.S. National Indoor Tournament draws to a close today, Sunday March 15, 2009. This year it was held over 4 successive weekends in 12 different locations ranging from Conyers, Georgia up to Fairbanks, Alaska. Preliminary, site-by-site results, are being posted on the new USA Archery website. Once the results from today are received the folks at the American Archers offices will combine all of the results and post them at this same link. As the volunteer records-keeper for USA Archery ( see this site for all records and also photos from past events) I am receiving record claims on a near-daily basis! It is gratifying to see that we continue to grow archery excellence in the U.S. and it is very important that if you shoot a new record score at one of these events, you fill out this adobe acrobat claim form, then print it, get your scorecard signed by either the judge or the tournament DOS, SIGN IT YOURSELF, and send copies of both into the American Archers Offices within 10 days from the last day of shooting (why, hello, that's today!). |
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| NArchival Archery History Have you ever stumbled upon a photograph of an archer from the turn of the century, perhaps tucked into a family photo album or lost in an attic somewhere? Any modern archer would understand the impulse to pause and marvel at an image of those men and women who gloried in our sport a century before the advent of sights, advanced metal alloys, or carbon-fiber technology. What would you do, if you came across an ancient photograph like that? What would you do if you came across two scrapbooks full of them? Last November, I was given a rare opportunity. During the High Performance Certification Course at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado, Nancy Myrick and I were talking about the history of the NAA, and she mentioned there were several scrapbooks at the NArchival Archery offices that were aging badly. I offered to convert them to digital images, only then to be overwhelmed by the size and weight of the packages that were then handed over! I am happy to report that the first book has been posted online as a photo album of rare and precious images for all to enjoy and share. The result is a digital record of a scrapbook containing news clips, score sheets, photos, and mementos of National Archery Association archery events ranging from 1911 to 1914. The items in the book were not in strict chronological order, and the paper had become extremely brittle and yellowed, crumbling at the slightest provocation. Some photos are astonishingly good, but many were not of stable quality originally and have faded. In a number of instances the scanned image reveals more detail than is visible in the original, thanks to the features of the VueScan software. There are a number of pages in the original scrapbook containing blank spots with captions, indicating that some photos have been removed and not returned. Perhaps they were removed in order to be used in other publications, and then not returned. Their absence is a disappointment, regardless. Each page was scanned at a resolution of 400 DPI and 16-bit gray output using VueScan 8.5.04 and an Epson V500 flatbed scanner, yielding a non-lossy format (tiff) file of approximately 31 megabytes each. Where the original had a color, such as the postage stamp, I used 24-bit RGB output. This high DPI count should enable successful Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of the text throughout at some point in the future. The online digital album uses compressed jpg files derived from the tiff files to allow for use by you (broadband recommended). I have scanned both the entire page and where appropriate, a separate scan of each photo on that page. Each item will have its own page in this photo album. Many photos are from newspaper print and therefore of limited quality. I have done what I can to improve the image, decreasing moire effect for example. Clicking on any thumbnail on the index pages of the album should provide a larger image and clicking in the lower center of that image will then load an even larger image. At some point the pages in the scrapbook were numbered by pencil, and page 150 was no longer present when this project was received. If anyone knows where the page or photos might be, their return would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you have any similar archery-related documents or photos of similar historical value and would be willing to allow their reproduction in a similar manner to this scrapbook, please contact the executive director at the USA Archery offices. This is especially true of any tournament brochures, results, trophy photos, medals, etc. This is an ongoing project to regain our history for the benefit of the entire membership and for posterity. The various newspaper articles speak of wonderful gold, silver, and bronze medals, arrows, artwork, all used as trophies, that we shall not likely see again as rewards for excellence - it is sad that we do not have images of these now.  Please enjoy exploring this priceless addition to the history of American archery. Click here to go directly to the digital album of the scrapbook. |
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| State Field 2009 Last year there were more than 70 archers that participated in the A State Field Championship, and we hope to top that this year by getting the registration information up and out on the web earlier than in years past.  To see the online registration information (as usual) please check the A State Archery website at this location. As usual, Rick Stonebraker and John Blaschke will be teaming up to make the course as innovative, challenging, fun, and NON-FLAT as possible. If you have never shot a field event, you will enjoy the challenge as well as the venue - an exotic animal ranch. And invite a friend! |
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2009 World Indoor Championships Well, the event is finally done and our archers have put in a tremendous effort in representing our country. The target bales have likely been burned for heat (they were apparently made of wood chips, more on that later). Some 338 archers have dispersed back to their 37 different countries around the world. There were SIX new records set (and several tied existing records) - The compound men's team from the USA, composed of Chance Beauboef, Jesse Broadwater, and Braden Gellenthien set a perfect score of 240. Mary Hamm tied her already perfect world record score of 120 in singles matchplay. Junior Compounder Christopher Schaff set a perfect 120 score in singles matchplay. Erika Anschutz, Holly Larson, and yes, again, Mary Hamm, set a new world record for women's compound matchplay, 236 out of a possible 240. THREE out of the SIX world records set had USA stamped on them. Medals, you ask? USA left Poland with 13 medals - the most of any country - with 7 gold, 4 silver, and 2 bronze. Of special note among many special notes is the fact that Mary Hamm peformed so well with "baby on board" - she is expecting, so much so that at casual glance at her shooting silhouette one would presume she is a good ol' boy shooting a compound.
 (photo by Holly Larson)
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| Archival Archery Board Changes The Archival Archery Board experienced some changes during the annual meeting, and I want to once again thank Rick Stonebraker for his services to the organization as president numerous times in the past. Stepping up to serve in Rick's place as president this year is Michael Hojnacki. Full minutes of the meeting can be found at this link. Welcome to Jennifer Holmes as V-P and to Don Morgan as JOAD Coordinator. Gina Carmichael continues in her 8th year as secretary/treasurer and Ron Carmichael in 9th year as the webmaster and newsletter editor (hi, folks). And now, some words from President Michael Hojnacki: From the president's corner... Hello and welcome! What exciting times we have to talk about. We had good representation from A at the World Indoor Championships. Team Gold Men's Recurve, Individual Gold Women's Compound, Team Gold Women's Compound. Way to go A! This is an exciting year and one that will definitely remain in the memories of all. We have some great tournaments planned for the year and the next big event in A is the Doinker A Shootout in College Station. If you are not planning to shoot, please make a day to attend and watch some great shooting by the archers from around the country.Following that tournament, another exciting Archival Archery State Field will be held at the Blaschke Deer Ranch in Eagle Lake A. In other news, we added an Olympian to the local membership, John Magera. He resides in Columbus, A. Glad to see you in A John! I look forward to writing more and having comments coming back about how the Archival Archery board is doing and what we can improve. All feedback is welcome! Thanks, Michael HojnackiArchival Archery president |
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| Prodigy? Not Really! Tom Barker just sent in a link to a very good article discussing what gives lie to the notion that our greatest athletes are natural prodigies. Mostly, they simply work harder, longer, and smarter than everyone else. And it verifies the notion that providing continual coaching feedback is a *good* thing. This link is a quick and worthwhile read on the Wall Street Journal website. Thanks for the tip, Tom! |
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| JUDGES needed. I am writing this because I saw a note today online, where a tournament in California is urgently searching for a judge to help with officiating at the event. There is a need for more archery judges, not just in California but all over.
If you are a parent of a JOAD archer, if you go to tournaments and pretty much just sit in the tent and read a book, or if maybe, you are an archer and enjoy the feeling of a tournament but don't for some reason shoot as much as you used to, please consider becoming a judge and opening up a whole new aspect of participating in archery. Jack Milchanowski, longtime NArchival Archery judge, recently wrote me to request that we do what we can to recruit some judges. Here is what Jack sent me, from the NArchival Archery website, and written by Tom Green, a US international judge: |
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| Viewership: A broken arrow award Based on the following numbers, I wish to offer a broken arrow award to the head of NBC Olympic Sports Programming, Gary Zenkel..... According to Nielsen Media Research, 4.7 billion viewers worldwide tuned in to some of the television coverage of the Olympics, one-fifth larger than the 3.9 billion who watched the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. The 2008 Olympics was the most-viewed event in American television history. From USA Today: "NBC notes that 211 million Americans watched the Beijing coverage ...on NBC or one of its many cable TV channels, whose collective cable TV viewership is up 25% over the 2004 Games". And I note that there were some astounding 3.6+ billion (about the same as watched the Athens Olympics!) around the world in television viewership of the Beijing Paralympics, based on statistics furnished me by the IPC: China: 1361 million and in case you missed that last item (drumroll, please) yes, NBC racked up a record ......zero...... US network television viewers to watch live coverage of the Beijing Paralympics. In fact NBC chose to ignore completely the Para events ongoing - there was NO live NBC network television coverage, there wee no daily summaries after the evening news, nothing, even though they held the monopoly on televising Paralympic coverage for the US. They did show some coverage on a virtually unknown cable channel that had only limited viewers (it was not on my local Austin cable, nor on any DirecTV channel, for example). And if you knew about it and where to look, you could find some coverage on the web.What it boils down to is the rest of the civilized world got to watch the second-largest athletic event in the world as it happened, but not you nor practically anyone else in the US. Sure would be neat to be able to contact Mr. Zenkel, to promote the notion of televising the NEXT paralympics. Or, maybe to put in a good word with the USOC about requiring the next television contract applicant to honor the US paralympians as they do the olympians? NBC holds the U.S. rights for all games through 2012 in London. I reckon it is a sad fact that most Americans had no idea there was even an event called the Paralympics, despite the televised attention the rest of the world enjoyed. It's a shame, really - I can testify personally to the unimaginable emotional power of watching the paralympians strive for citius, altius, and fortius with every bit of fervor and excellence equal to that displayed by those blessed with perfect bodies. It's a shame that all NBC could do was to air 48 minutes of condensed (but highly melodramatic) coverage of only 5 sports with 0.9 seconds of archery, months after the fact. Two paralympians, one of them a gold medallist, have succumbed to their disabilities since Beijing. They both knew they were fighting for their lives against terminal illnesses, yet elected to spend their last days on earth competing. These athletes, along with 4,000 or so others, are insulted by the NBC televsion network and those that permit them to ignore the world class competitions of the Paralympic Games. According to Rich Perelman, who has served as the U.S. national track & field team press officer and worked with five Olympic organizing committees beginning with the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles: Please write a polite email to Gary Zenkel at NBC via email by using this email address. (nbcsportshelp@nbcuni.com) |
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