Thanks followers

On Thursday, I competed at Ontario High School Archery Invitational Tournament, a sanctioned Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) event. To my delight over 400 provincial high-school archers participated with over 100 in the Girls Olympic division.

Although, I finished 6^th this year, my excitement came from meeting some of my blog followers.  I love meeting my followers and discovering that they enjoy my blog and  find it useful.  I want to thank those people for coming up to me and introducing themselves to me.  I hope I get the pleasure to meet more of you in the future.

One of the weekend’s highlights was finding out, Canadian national and Olympic coach Joan MacDonald has read my blog. While presenting me with my 6^th place award she whispered to me “good job with your blog and keep up the good work”; high praise from some with over 30 years of archery experience.

In the future, I hope to personally meet more of my followers. I would also like to thank all of my other followers who have followed my blog for the past several years.

Happy Shooting

2013 Ontario IFAA Indoor Field Championships

From January 19^th-27^th Ontario held it is first of two annual indoor provincial championships, the indoor Field Championships. This annual tournament is hosted by many sites across the province with mail-in scoring. Since indoor tournaments do not have varying weather conditions, you can facilitate a larger target population and multiple host clubs as long as you employ provincial level judges.

This tournament consists of two rounds of 6 ends, with five arrows per end. The target is a 5 ring IFAA target with a white center and four blue rings. The center white is worth 5 points and contains an inner X ring used for tiebreakers. Scoring is 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.  You can choose to shoot a single spot, or a 5 spot with only the 4, 5 rings. This a good option for consistent archers who want to avoid breaking arrows, similar to selecting a 3-spot in a FITA tournament.

These indoor championships follow IFAA rules which are slightly different from FITA rules. The most significant in my opinion is the scoring.  I will not explain all of them however two of the differences are the shorter distances for younger archers and age divisions. To start peewee and pre-cub archers, like my little brother Cole, are able to compete at 10 yards (8M) instead of 20 yards (18M) which is better suited for their poundage. Next the age division you compete under is determined by your age on the tournament date rather than how old you will be at the end of the year.

Personally I enjoy the field championships and I find it a great way to start a season and benchmark your shooting status at the beginning of the season.  Next year, if you have an opportunity, I would strongly recommend you sign-up for an indoor field championship; you will not be disappointed, it’s a lot of fun.

2012 Annual Report

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 63,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. That is about 4.8 times more views than last year.

In 2012, there were 84 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 171 posts. There were 147 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 15 MB. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

Click here to see the complete report.

Second Place

I am very pleased to announce that this blog, Jordan Sequillion : My Quest for Archery Olympic Gold, finished as the second Best Sports Blog of the Year for 2012 by the Canadian Blog Awards. In the final round I managed to collect 33% of the popular vote and narrowly lost to Straight from the Arse who collected 39%.

Thanks to everyone who took time to vote for me, I can not express my level of gratitude to you. My hope is to continue to deliver quality information about archery in the future.

Finalist

Thanks to everyone voting for me, I am a finalist for Best Sports Blog of the Year for 2012 by the Canadian Blog Awards. I finished 2nd in the first round and managed to get approximately 19% of the votes. The final round is between the top four most popular blogs. My hope is that everyone will continue to support me in the final round. 

If you enjoy my blog please visit the voting site and cast your vote. Also I would appreciate you telling your friends. Polls closes on December 1st.

Recently, several of my readers posted questions about various aspects of the sport of archery. I really enjoyed answering each of these questions and I hope that if anyone has any more questions about archery, they will post them for me to answer.

Winner of the SBA Best New Sports Blog – September 2012

I am very pleased to announce that my blog “Jordan Sequillion – My Quest for Archery Gold” has been awarded the Sports Blog Award (SBA) Best New Sports Blog for September 2012.

I know there are lots of great sport blogs and I really want to thank all the judges who reviewed the site and found it worthy of winning.

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I hope to continue to provide valuable information to my readers and help grow the sport of archery.

2012 Ontario Target Championships

This past weekend, Algoma Rod and Gun Club in the Sault Ste Marie hosted the Ontario Provincial Target Championships. Sault Ste Marie is situated in Northern Ontario on the eastern point of Lake Superior and 12 hours away from Kingston. Wow, what a long drive for my family, and to give some perspective, in Europe you could travel from Rome, Italy to Frankfurt Germany in the same amount of time. Although it was a long drive 85 of the top archers from around the province travelled to compete in the two-day tournament with a FITA 1440 on day one and a FITA 720 on the second day.

Upon return from the National Championships in British Columbia, I finally received my amazing new bow from Cartel Doosung.  With only two weeks of practice, typically you wouldn’t change anything however this bow is perfectly suited for me; possibly the best bow I have ever shot. Since this is really the last competitive tournament of the outdoor season, I decided to use it.  In my opinion, it was a very good decision. The winds were extremely tricky; flags on targets beside each were other pointing in opposite directions. Every one was having troubles with them. For only two-weeks practice I feel I shot extremely well, perhaps the best I have shot all season, and was able to capture the Bronze medal.  I know this will translate into success in the upcoming indoor season and next year’s outdoor season.

This tournament was also a complete family event as all my siblings participated. My sister Sydney competed in the female cadet recurve division finishing fourth. Joshua competed in the Male Cub Recurve division finishing second, even though he could not complete the tournament because of a shoulder injury. Last and not least, my youngest brother Cole competed in the Male Pre-cub Recurve Division also capturing silver.

It was a great successful tournament and a great family trip since we camped at the KOA campgrounds. I am already looking forward to next year’s family tournament trip.

Canada Captures the Bronze

Norbert Murphy captured the Bronze yesterday in the Men’s individual Compound -W1 division.

To reach the semi-finals, Norbert first defeated Shinichi Saito of Japan and Peter Kinik of Slovakia.  In the semi-final he faced Jeff Fabry of the United States, the eventual Gold Medalist. After Norbert lost 3-7 he moved into the Bronze medal match to face Osmo Kinnunen of Finland. Norbert shot extremely well tieing only a single end to take home the bronze medal.

Jeff Fabry of the United States went on to capture the Gold defeating David Drahoninsky  of Czech Republic in the Finals 6-2.

Congratulations!!!!

I’m Back…

Just got back from this year’s Canadian National Field and Target Championships held on beautiful Vancouver Island in British Columbia. This year I travelled with my coach Kathy Millar from South Nation Archery Supply and without either of my parents.

The Field Championships were hosted by Cowichan Bowmen Archery Club which is considered the best field course in all of Canada. The course is both beautiful and challenging with large rocky hills, angled trees, and other mind illusions. According to my coach it is pretty close to world level field tournaments. I also had the honour to shoot with my World Indoor Championships teammates Virginie Chenier and Caitlin Northey and I was fortunate enough to placed third.

The Target Championships were hosted at the West Shore facility consisting of both a FITA 1440 on day one and a FITA 720 on day two. Day one was not the best shooting day for me; the wind was tricky, I was not feeling the best, and I had an equipment failure where my arrow rest came off. On day two, the FITA 720, I was still a little shaken up from the FITA 1440, but I had a much better shooting day. Although I did not medal, I did come back with a lot more mental experience and a lot of fun memories.

The National Championship trip also provided me with a HUGE surprise.

In 2011, the Gunter family established an annual bursary for Canadian junior archers to be awarded at the National Championships. The WW Gunter Memorial Bursary is awarded annually to a Canadian Archer between the ages of 15 and 20, who has competed or will be competing for Canada at a World Championship or international archery competition such as the Youth Olympic Games, and who is planning to continue their education at the post-secondary level. The archer must conduct themselves in a manner that is a credit to their sport, their country and always maintain a sense of dignity and sportsmanship in victory and defeat.

To say I was surprised when they announced that I would be this years recipient would be a massive understatement. I was in such disbelief, my coach, Kathy actually had to nudge me to go and receive the award. I am humbled that the Gunter family would endow me with such an honour and I thank them enormously.

Ontario Field Championships

This weekend, York County Bowman in New Market Ontario hosted the Ontario Provincial Field Championships, a two-day IFAA tournament with field round the first day and a hunter round the second day. IFAA field tournaments differ slightly from FITA field tournaments, besides being in yards not meters, there are stations with walk-ups or fan shooting and hunter includes odd distances like 53 yards and 20 feet.

I really enjoy shooting in field tournaments, they are just pure fun. Walking through the bush shooting at various size targets from various distances. You shoot up and down hills and over streams with the opportunity to shoot in various stances, on rough ground and at various angles to the target. This year, it was a great opportunity to shoot and practice angles in preparation of the upcoming National Field Championship in Victoria British Columbia next week.

It also marked the first outdoor tournament for my youngest brother Cole who is nine.  Being the youngest of four, it has been a challenge for him living in the shadow of his older brothers and sisters. He has always wanted to do things that we are doing.  Earlier in the year, he shot his first indoor tournament however came up just short of medaling. This time he would not be denied, it was a lot of walking for him however it was all worth it when he received his Gold medal in the Pre-cub recurve division.

Congratulations Cole!