Posted in Archery Stories, Olympic News, World Championships on January 30th, 2009 | No Comments »

Coach Bob Towne, San Diego, California, passed away at his parent’s home on January 17th after a short battle with a rare form of cancer. Bob was a Certified Level 4 National Coach with 25 years experience in the sport of archery. As a competitor, he had won 3 state championship titles and was a staff shooter for Browning. In 2004, Bob served as a Coach on the Jr. World Team which competed in England. The Compound boys and girls brought back 5 gold and 3 silver medals under his team leadership at that event.

Read more here:
Archery Community Loses one of its Best – Bob Towne

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Posted in Archery Stories, Olympic News on January 30th, 2009 | No Comments »

Antony Wood was part of a three-man team representing Great Britain who annexed the team gold at the Australian Youth Olympic Festival.

National Junior Archery Champion, Antony, 15, from Vansittart Drive, joined 16-year-old Mark Nesbitt from Banbridge and Alec Wheeler from Bedford, vanquishing tournament favourites Australia, Korea and China to win top honours.

The feat was made even more remarkable because it was only the second time the team has competed in an international tournament together – they had spent the previous week in Brisbane.

Read more here:
Antony earns ninth place and team gold

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Posted in Archery Stories on January 30th, 2009 | No Comments »

USA Archery has really come alive here recently. I know that there are critics out there but I’m seeing much more activity and publicity for archery than I have in the past. Congratulations to these nominees!

USA Archery selects coaches in several categories to be recognized for their special coaching contributions and accomplishments. These coaches are then placed in nomination to be considered for selection to the USOC Coach of the Year Program.

The USAA 2008 Coaches of the Year are:

• Michael Usherenko, Level IV Coach from Oakland, NJ, for National Coach of the Year,

• Michael Wichser, Monroe, WA for Developmental Coach of the Year,

• Larry Anderson, Bothell, WA for Volunteer Coach of the Year.

Read more here:
USA Archery Announces Three for Coach of the Year Recognition

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Posted in Archery Stories, World Championships on January 30th, 2009 | No Comments »

The 2009 World University Games will be held in Serbia, 2-12 July 2009. USA Archery will be funding a 3-person staff to support the 2009 WUG Team.

While USA archery establishes a new Coaches Development Committee and hires a new High Performance Manager, the need to move forward with staffing positions for the WUG team is necessary. For 2009, the procedure for Coach selection will be as it was in 2008.

Current plans are for athletes and team leaders to attend an athlete’s training camp prior to this event at the Univ of Connecticut. Team leaders will be asked to attend this training camp with the team.

Read more here about how to apply and for more information:
Call for 2009 WUG Staff

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Posted in Archery Stories on January 28th, 2009 | No Comments »

Congratulations to Ms. Maya Inamura. It’s a great thing in giving back to her community and to teach archery.

For her Gold Award project, Maya planned and conducted four Youth Archery Workshops for 20 beginning archers. Maya has been an archer since ninth grade. She is a Team Shooter for Nock Point Archery in Mountlake Terrace, and is a state record holder in Olympic Recurve-style target archery.

Read more here:
The Enterprise Newspapers: Honors

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Posted in Archery Stories on January 27th, 2009 | No Comments »

Malaine Pitre stood on the gym floor line with her bow resting on her toes. She waited until she got the all clear.
The 11-year-old placed the arrow carefully in the bow, lined up her shot and fired. The shot did not go exactly where she had aimed, but she was smiling.

“This is fun,” the fifth-grader said. “Shooting is the best part.”

For the third year, Gilchrist is teaching her students Olympic-style archery. It is a physical education activity that is not always included in schools’ curricula. She said there are various issues from safety concerns to damage of a gym. But Gilchrist has had no problems with either. She is planning to take some of her students, ranging from third-graders through eighth-graders, to a state archery contest.

Read more here:
School archery programs aim to teach lessons, skills for life

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Posted in Archery Stories, Archery Video, World Championships on January 26th, 2009 | No Comments »

Here’s a short video on the Archery World Cup held in El Salvador in 2006. It looks like they just got the gold medal rounds in just before the skies opened up. Both compound and recurve competition in this video.

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Posted in Archery Stories, Olympic News on January 24th, 2009 | No Comments »

I must admit that I’m relatively new to the inner workings of the NAA and the changes that they’re going through. Professor Liles is certainly not fond of the current incarnation of the NAA and the changes going on there.

Archery has a problem with leadership and the sustainability of the organizations. The roots of the problem are in the leadership, the issues of differing opinions, the problems with past practices. There is also some temerity in the different organizations for buy-in. The idea that the membership is more than supporting the very few is empty. The practice of the National Archery Association currently is to promogulate a ponzi scheme where all of the membership supports very few athletes who go to the Olympics. The wholesale changes to the coaching and high performance programs centralize and denigrate the efforts of smaller clubs. The governing processes and representation are woefully inadequate for a membership driven organization.

I’m hoping to have the opporunity to ask him some more specifics about the issues and changes to the NAA that he is making reference. I’m hoping that the NAA is open to criticism as long as criticism is supported and offered in the right light. Stay tuned.

Read more here:
Disarray: The National Archery Association

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Posted in Archery Stories on January 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »

The Texins Archery Club introduced about 1,000 children to archery last year, and the club has set its sights much higher in 2009. Club president Clint Montgomery says it’s shooting for 5,000 new junior archers this year.

Archery is a growing sport for a number of reasons. A target range for shooting with a bow and arrow doesn’t require nearly as much space as a firearms shooting range. With archery equipment, there’s no issue with noise and few government hoops to jump through regarding firearms problems like lead contamination.

Read more here:
Growing archery club targets new generation

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Posted in Archery Stories, Olympic News on January 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »

A bronze medal in the Australian Youth Olympic Festival has brought national media attention for prodigious archer Lauren McPherson.

It was definitely the toughest competition I have ever faced. The world championships were quite tough, but this was like a mini Olympics.

“We weren’t expected to get a medal at all. We just went out there to shoot and enjoy the experience, but we (Britain) got a team gold in the boys, an individual gold in the boys team and our bronze.

“It’s been a really good experience. The coaches were all really proud of me and the team as I am all proud of them, too.”

Read more here:
Young Lauren brings home Olympic bronze

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