Archery Back Pack Bow Case

Last year, I wrote a blog about archery cases to discuss the various types and their uses. One of my subscribers commented “No rucksack-style cases … great for public transport (being a city person). john | theinfinitecurve.com”.

Backpack style bow cases are a relatively new type of soft-shell case, recently Cartel sent me one of their Midas infinity archery “backpack” bow cases, to check out and I have to say, I really like it! I find it different from traditional soft-shell cases, as it is more rigid, rugged, and protective and has more compartments to keep everything organized.

Midas infinity Backpack Case

This bow case has two large pockets, with a side compartment for an arrow tube. The main pocket is divided into two large pockets plus a thinner one (for holding limbs, riser, and stabilizer). There are also straps just above the pocket to limit movement and ensure security. There is extra space for other equipment to fit in the main pocket, if needed. The second pocket which is a little bit smaller than the main pocket has three pockets and a strap. Two of the pockets are fairly small and handy for tools and other small equipment, the other pocket is larger and better for towels or maybe a sight. On the back of the backpack there are thick straps and buckles for you to wear your bow case like a backpack. There are also cushions for lumbar support and it enables airflow to your back. There is also a handle if you want to hang your bow case up right, with a small pocket for your address card just above it. There is also a side handle if you want to carry your bowcase like suit case (or like most other bow case). The Midas infinity archery backpack comes in three colors; blue, red, and grey. In one of my past blogs I talked about the many uses for a case and the reasons why you would buy a certain case.

In this particular “case”, archers that go and shoot in the bush a lot would find this style very useful. I know for me personally this case will be handy, light and easy for me to transport to where I shoot or back home to visit while I am at university.   I look forward to using this new bow case this up and coming school year.

Ontario Spring Classic

This past weekend, I attended the Ontario Spring Classic, one of Canada’s premiere archery events usually held in Toronto. This year’s event attracted over 110 archers from Nova Scotia to British Colombia and several international archers including France, Netherlands and the United States.

The Ontario Spring Classic is a two-day tournament and usually held every year over Father’s day weekend. The tournament starts with a ranking round on Saturday consisting of either double 720 round OR FITA1440 round. On Sunday the tournament finishes with a complete double elimination round.

This year’s Spring Classic was a double 720 held at Bill Connor Secondary, and doubled as trials for the Youth Olympic Games and the Pan Am games trial run. This year’s competition marked my first outdoor tournament of the 2014 season. Saturday’s weather conditions for the double 720 were crazy. For June, it was very cold at 11°C outside and there were a lot of swirling winds that caused havoc for everyone. The winds were totally unpredictable, they were constantly changing direction and speed, forcing you to really watch closely on each and every shot.

For me, I took the approach to have a good time, talk with friends, continue to embrace it as a new challenge, and a true learning experience. Although the weather finally cleared up for the last two ends, after fighting the winds, I was happy to get back to the hotel, take off my shoes, and sit in the hotel’s hot tub.

Sunday was a complete reversal of weather conditions, sunny, calm and about 20°C. It was an absolutely beautiful day for shooting. I did manage to last through three rounds of elimination, finally losing to my World Indoor Championships teammate Gayle from Nova Scotia. For me, the best part was getting back to competition, shooting with some of Canada’s top World and Olympic archers, seeing all my friends and spending time with my mom and sister who accompanied me.

High-ho, High-ho…

Almost everyone knows that students need to work during the summer to help pay for school; I am not special. Once school finished I started looking for a summer job to help me pay for my education too, however getting that job has not been very easy so far. Since I am studying Kinesiology, I was hoping to get some work experience in a physiotherapy office or something similar. I have applied at several places but have had no luck yet.

Since,  I am a certified NCCP Intermediate level archery coach, I thought in the meantime I could continue to coach during the summers or whenever I had free time. So far, I have been doing a lot of advertising like making business cards and posters, to help promote archery lessons. Hopefully I’ll soon have some students sign-up for lessons. I love teaching everybody about the sport of archery, helping students improve and learn to love the sport as much as I do.

I also have been tossing the idea around about doing private lessons online (via Skype, or video chat). I remember getting comments from a couple of followers that they do not have a lot of coaching options. Although, I can only offer lessons in English, if anyone is interested in trying coaching over the web, please let me know. We can setup a lessons and handle payment through Paypal.

Indoor Archery World Cup Final – Vegas Shoot Starts Today

 

This year’s Vegas Shoot is the biggest ever – with around 2,200 registered competitors. Attracted by a generous prize fund, the championship division features a large contingent of professional athletes each year – while the flight categories, for amateur archers, have seen a drastic increase in popularity.

Live scores are available throughout the tournament, in which archers shoot 30 arrows at a triangular triple-spot face each of the three days of the tournament. Three of these 300 rounds (an NFAA – the organisers – round in the USA) decide the final rankings at The Vegas Shoot.

Read More…

Happy Holidays Everyone!

This first semester of university has been crazy, just trying to adjust to school as well as find time to have fun. Then there have been exams, needless to say that was not fun, but I studied hard and now they are done. I have been lucky enough to able to shoot on Tuesdays and Thursday for a couple of hours in the main gym, which is really nice because I know there are some people that have to give up training altogether. I am hoping to continue to arrange some more hours practice hours in the gym this coming semester. It was kind of weird going from shooting in my garage to a big gym by myself, however, it was kind of cool as I got to meet lots of people as they came by to just watch me.

I made a few new friends so far in university, one of them who actually shoots a compound bow. It has been wonderful getting to know all these new people, however it is also really nice to come back home and spend the holidays with my family. Soon I will return back to school with a new semester and hopefully this one will be even better than the last. Thanks again to all who have been reading my blog, I hope that you too have had a wonderful Christmas and that the new year will be even better than the last.

I have had a wonderful Holiday break, it has been lots of fun.

Happy Shooting!

Silver for Canada at World Youth Archery Championship

Canada finished the 2013 World Youth Archery Championship in Wuxi, China on a high note as the Men’s Team in the Cadet (age class) Compound Bow category won the silver medal. The Canadian Team, comprised of Hunter McGinnis (Winnipeg, MB), Logan Kupchanko (Regina, SK) and Tyler Murphy (Fredericton, NB), faced Turkey in the gold medal match on Saturday. After building an early lead, Turkey prevailed in winning the match by a score of 224-218. Kupchanko followed in the footsteps of his older brother Michael who was a member of the Junior Men’s Compound Team that won the gold medal for Canada at the 2011 World Youth Archery Championship. Read More…

Congratulations Hunter, Logan and Tyler and to the entire Canadian team.

Crispin Duenas Brings Home Bronze Medal from World Archery Championship

In the bronze medal match, Duenas who is 27 years old, won his first-ever World Championship medal. After defeating a string of top opponents in the elimination rounds (including 2012 Olympic silver medallist Takaharu Furukawa of Japan and 2012 World Cup medallist Markiyan Ivashko of Ukraine), the 2012 and 2008 Canadian Olympian faced China’s Dai Xiaoxiang for the first time in competition. Against the reigning individual Olympic bronze medallist and World Cup Final silver medallist, Duenas stormed to victory in just three sets. Under the pressure to deliver a 10 with his last arrow to win, Duenas blasted an arrow down for a perfect score. “Surprisingly, it felt easy to execute my shot”, Duenas commented. “It’s my first time out here in front of this big crowd at the World Championship, and I’m just really happy right now. I just kept it in my head that it’s exactly the same thing that I’m doing all the time. It made it a lot easier for me.” Read More…

Congratulations Crispin and the entire Canadian Team!!!

Redeemer or Bust…

In the next few days I will be off to Redeemer University to begin the journey towards my Kinesiology undergraduate degree.

Kinesiology, also known as human kinetics, is the scientific study of human movement. Kinesiology addresses physiological, mechanical, and psychological mechanisms. Applications of kinesiology to human health include: biomechanics and orthopedics; strength and conditioning; sport psychology; methods of rehabilitation, such as physical and occupational therapy; and sport and exercise. Individuals who have earned degrees in kinesiology can work in research, the fitness industry, clinical settings, and in industrial environments. Studies of human and animal motion include measures from motion tracking systems, electrophysiology of muscle and brain activity, various methods for monitoring physiological function, and other behavioral and cognitive research techniques. Wikipedia

Like many first year students I will be moving out for the first time, and doing a lot of things on my own.  This new adventure in my life will be a lot of fun and not only will I be learning about the subject that I love but I will be making new friends on the way. As thrilling as this new experiment is going to be, I will miss all of my family and friends who have supported me for all of my life. I couldn’t have asked for any better relationships, and I know that even if they are far away they will still love and support me until the end of time.

To all my followers, please remember my education comes first however my goals will be to continue to blog whenever I have time between studying, classes, labs and exams. I have enjoyed sharing and helping with your archery questions, please keep your questions coming and I will try to answer as quickly as a I can.

Chapter One complete…

On Thursday, I finished the first chapter of my life by graduating from Kingston Vocational & Collegiate Institute.  My graduating class was about 300 kids, with more 80% graduating with honors (academic 80% average) and Ontario scholars of which I was one. I remember walking across the stage, my brothers and sister cheering, apparently my mother cried, my father could not stop taking photos they was so proud and happy.

Besides being an Ontario scholar, I was also the recipient of couple of awards and scholarships. With the first award, my name with forever by etched on the walls of K.C.V.I. as it in engraved on a plague.

The Adrien Langlois Award (Physical Education)

Awarded to a graduating student who has completed a minimum of three physical education credits including PSE4U (Sport Science). The student is considered the best overall physical education student as determined by the Healthy Active living department

The Sandy Prentice Memorial Scholarship

The scholarship is designed to recognize the efforts and accomplishments of a graduating K.C.V.I. student with an identified communication disability. The student must have demonstrated outstanding and persistent effort in overcoming the challenges of their learning difficulty such as reading, writing, organization or social skills. The student must also demonstrate a high degree of academic competence, the ability to self advocate and self regulate, and some level of contribution to the school community in the area of sports, clubs, or student leadership.

Graduating from high school was an extremely important moment for me, since at five years old, my parents were told I would never learn to read or write so not to bother to try and teach me. I have dyslexia, severe auditory processing communication disorder to be more exact, so much so that when officially tested, I scored in 1st percentile.

There is often a misconception about dyslexia, most people think of people reversing letters or numbers; however dyslexia is about learning differently, and auditory processing disorder is a broad umbrella for people who have difficultly either understanding or expressing ideas or information either verbally or written. For an overview about various types of auditory processing disorder check out the Wikipedia article.

This is the first time I have publicly acknowledged my learning challenge. Mainly because I never ever wanted anyone to treat me differently or for one minute think that I could not do something. Personally, I think it is a learning GIFT, since I just learn differently and the list of famous people with dyslexia is very extensive including Muhammad Ali, Cher, Robin Williams, Albert Einstein and many more.

Although, I had been accepted at Dalhousie and Acadia, I will be attending Redeemer University in Ancaster, Ontario this fall studying Kinesiology, with  goals of becoming a physiotherapist and a national level archery coach.  To all who read this, do not let anyone else dictate your path in life. You can achieve anything you want to, it just takes a little hard work.

Bowstring Maintenance & Replacement

In the last blog, we discussed the purpose and application of bowstring wax as a part of proper string maintenance. Another way to prolong the life of your string includes proper storage. Obviously, you should store your string in a safe dry place, and protect it the best way you can to prevent damage. However, you spend time tuning your bow including adding the “perfect” number of twists to the string, therefore you should store your string to maintain this tuning.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to interlace the teardrop loops together as shown here.

Although, proper maintenance and storage of a string can help a string last years, every archer will eventually need to change their string. Before any shooting sessions or tournament, it should be a part of your regular routine to check your equipment for damage. Where your string is concerned, if there are signs of damage such as signs of fraying or one or more strand breaks you should consider changing your string.

Although as string materials have evolved, the strength of individual strands have far exceeded where they need to be in terms of breaking under strain.  The number of strands impact the nock fit and when shooting with the extra strands added, it was found that it could help make the bow a bit more stable. Competitive archers rarely will shot with even a minimally damaged sting since it may impact the performance and therefore, any competitive archer should have two strings for tournaments. The two strings should be exactly the same, ideally created at the same time, on the same day, on the same jig, by the same person; this way you can swap them confidently. Personally if a single strand breaks, I immediately switch to my backup string or alternatively during a tournament to my back up bow.

Strings are so important that some archers schedule string changes so they can maintain the same performance, since strings can stretch over time, and also not worry too much about potential damage.  Depending on your budget this may or may not be an option. Another option includes custom strings and making your own using a string jig however that is the topic of another blog.