OSG Mississauga 2016

I recently had the pleasure to be the coach once again for the Ontario Summer Games (OSGs), this year was held in Mississauga Ontario. This year was special for the athletes because it was the largest Ontario Summer games in history, awarding over 2000 awards in total. This year’s opening ceremonies were very cool, it reminded me of when I went to the Canada Winter Games. The athletes entered into a whole arena full of fans cheering them on, and they had a bunch of live entertainment. The opening ceremonies were even streamed for the first 45 minutes.

This year was also a big year for the archery event as well, for this was the first year that they change the OSG format. This year they decided to shoot two 720s the first day and the second day shooting at 720 with a round robin of matchplay and match set. Archery lingo inside, basically it means instead of shooting three distances they only shot one distance the three days. I personally think that the exposure to match play and set would be beneficial for future athletes because the tournament type would be like international events (e.g. olympics).

The tournament was an eventful year for the Eastern zone, it was definitely full of experience that these athletes will learn from and remember for the rest of their lives. They learned how to shoot in; high winds, high humidity, heat, and down pouring rain with chances of thundershowers. They learned the importance/how to keep equipment and scorecards dry. We were very fortunate to have found some towels and a laundry card that we can dry the equipment with, thank goodness I brought a hair dryer for all the shoes.

This year the committee decided that to make sure that all the athletes had a chance to experience the matchplay and match set they decided to do a round robin. Traditionally match play and match set are done in a single elimination format (or double elimination rounds if you’re in Canada). The archers seemed to really enjoy a different shooting format, after understanding the rules for the match play and match set. However, by the end of the day all the archers were completely exhausted by the end of the day.
As a coach I was completely ecstatic with the results, after all these athletes had faced challenges that most had never faced before (e.g. equipment failures, whether, or even being independent from their parents). Eastern zone did fantastically well taking home a large portion of not only the 720 medals but also for the round robin medals. The results are posted on the OSG and the OAA websites.

https://www.oaa-archery.on.ca/tournaments/records-and-results

https://www.osgmississauga.ca/sport

I hope I have the pleasure to be the coach for the Eastern zone in the 2018 OSGs in London Ontario, and if I’m super lucky I get to see these kids again.

For all my eastern zone archers that are reading, it was a pleasure to get to know you and to shoot with you.

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.

MICA 2014

This past Wednesday, South nation archery supply held an awards ceremony; everyone did extremely well this past indoor season.  Sydney, Josh and Cole all did very well this year winning several club and provincial medals. This past year, I was able to participate in a couple of tournament, however for me it was nice to see everyone again after being away for school.  My highlight from this past indoor season was the MICA team event.

The Multi-Indoor Championships of the Americas OR MICA for short. MICA is only one of very few indoor International Championships that is open to all archers that you do not have to travel for. Designated host archery clubs throughout North and South America host tournaments for both individuals and teams to submit scores from January 1 – April 30. Male or female archers can compete individually in cadet, junior, senior or master categories in either compound or recurve. Additionally clubs can also host junior or senior male or female teams in either compound or recurve, provided they are all from the same club.

Since it is a FITA sanctioned event, individuals submit their score from a double indoor FITA (60 arrows) and the team event submit a FITA team score (24 arrows) where each archer shoots 2 arrows alternating for four ends. This is one of my favorite events and one of the few times you can practice the team event.

This year, I shot with my sister Sydney, and our friend Lindsay and we captured the Silver this year behind the Brazilian team. On other exciting, my brother Joshua shot with his two friends, Josh and Kaleb Parker, participating in as a Junior team [all who are not Juniors] and shot new Canadian record for Junior Men Recurve Team division with a score of 211, however finished in fifth place overall.

Congratulations to everyone at South nation for another successful year. A special thanks to our coach Kathleen Miller and Larry Smith for all their hard work this year.

World Archery Indoor Championships 2014

Under the authority of the «World Archery Federation (WA) and with the support of the French Archery Federation(FFTA), and for the 2nd time after 2003, the city of Nîmes will host the 12th World Archery Indoor Championships from Tuesday 25th February to Sunday 2nd March 2014.

For this worldwide event, 400 athletes and their staff from 42 different nationalities coming from the 5 continents are awaited. During 6 days, these archers will excel to offer the 12,000 spectators the greatest show ever, with the help of the 180 friendly mobilized volunteers. Read More…

2014 Ontario Indoor 10-ring Target Championship

All this week, from February 15th to February 23th, clubs across Ontario are hosting the mail-in scoring tournament. The 10-ring target championship is an indoor FITA tournament and is the standard format for the Canadian National Indoor Championships and all World Indoor Championships. The tournament follows standard FITA rules using a 10-ring 40cm target ( 60 cm for Cub and Pre-cub Recurve) with two rings each of Gold, Red, Blue, Black and White and everyone shooting from 18M. Consistent archers may choose to use a vertical 3 spot to avoid breaking arrows and nocks.

Yesterday, I shot in my 9^th Provincial Indoor 10-ring Target Championship. Although I have not always won a medal, I have always enjoyed it and this year was no exception. Being away at university and focusing on my education and career development, I was unable to participate in the Provincial Indoor Field Championship. That aside, I have been able to train. Redeemer has been extremely generous to afford me the gym a couple of days a week to train and practice. I have been fortunate enough to be able to co-ordinate some virtual training time with my awesome coach Kathy Millar via SKYPE. That aside, archery is a social sport and although it has been great to keep shooting, what I really missed was shooting with sister, my little brothers (both who are not little anymore) and my archery family. I had a lot of fun shooting, joking around and spending time with my family and friends.

If you live in Ontario and have never competed in an indoor target championship, check out the Ontario Association of Archer’s website for host site and dates near you. Hurry as pre-registration is usually required.

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…

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS 2013 SET TO BEGIN BY THE TURKISH RIVIERA

Belek – Thursday, September 26, 2013 The 2013 edition of the Outdoor World Championships will be held from 29 September to 6 October in the municipality of Belek, Turkey’s Antalya Province.

The Turkish Riviera is again the epicentre of a first class World Archery tournament. The outdoor season will culminate with this major event in another spectacular venue: the Beach of Belek will be home of the finals on 5-6 October. The qualification and elimination rounds will take place close to Belek, at the Papillon Sports Centre in Kadriye from 29 September to 4 October.

Read the whole article here…

2014 Canadian National Championships

To all my followers, I’m sorry I have not blogged in a while, however my family and I just got back from Woodstock, New Brunswick for the Canadian Nationals Archery Championships.  This year’s trip to Woodstock was a 10 hour drive from Kingston, Ontario which was long however not as long as the drive to Saskatchewan a couple of years ago.

This year was the first time that all of my siblings competed in the outdoor Nationals (my sister Sydney’s and younger brother Cole’s very first nationals). We all did really well and we had a lot of fun. For me, it was great seeing all of my friends from across Canada again and spending time together as a family since it was also our family vacation.

This year’s national’s format was a little different, mainly because of the number of competitors, and setup of the venue. To accommodate everyone, the FITA 1440 and Field were split, with the Compound archers shooting the field on Wednesday, while the Recurve archers shot the FITA 1440 and on Thursday they switched.  On Friday, everyone shot the 720 round with Recurve archers in the morning and the Compounders in the afternoon.  The venue also sported two shooting fields (Range A and B ) so they had the senior males on one field, and the youth and women on the other field. It was cool, a little different from other tournaments where we all shoot together.

The main event this year was the weather, there was sunshine, rain (light and down-pour), lightning and fog. There was sunshine on Wednesday, light rain on Thursday, and torrential down-pour with lightning on Friday and back to sunshine of Saturday. The FITA 1440 on Wednesday was my only day with nice weather. The field course on Thursday was very cool and I thought it was very similar to Saskatchewan’s field course.  I loved shooting in the rain and the course was a lot of fun with all the mud and big puddles. Friday morning’s 720 was very challenging, the fog was so thick that you couldn’t tell whose arrows were who’s even through a scope. Luckily the 30-minute break because of the rain and lightning helped clear that up and we were back to rain, mud and puddles.

The only thing that I would have like to have seen handled a little differently was the Canadian Open held on Saturday.  Since, this year we had a large number of Americans participate at the Nationals it reduced the number of spots for Canadian archers in the Open. Although, I believe the Americans have every right to participate, I would have liked to have seen more Canadians in the Open. See, I believe it is very important for the development of archery in Canada to make sure archers are exposed to the elimination rounds. The elimination round is very different, are not that easy, and the primary format for international tournaments. All archers wanting to compete at the international level should become familiar with the elimination round as much as possible.

Also, in Canada to increase your ranking, you need to compete in eliminations rounds, however there are very few elimination rounds hosted in Canada. One is the Quebec Provincial Championships in September, two others are held about the same time, the Canada Cup (West Coast) and Spring Classic (Toronto) and the third is the Canadian Open during the National Championships. I hope in the future, the National archery committee allows everyone to participate in the Open if they want to.

The next Canadian National Outdoor Championships are being held in Lac La Biche, Alberta in August 2014. The schedule includes 3D from the 1^st through 4^th, the Field on 5^th and 6^th, and Target on the 7^th through the 10th.

Canada on the Podium in the Czech Republic

Canada’s para-archery team won three medals at the 2013 Czech Target international para-archery tournament in Nove Mesto nad Metuji, Czech Republic. This year’s team consisting of Alec Denys of Warsaw, ON, Kevin Evans of Jaffray, BC, Bob Hudson of Leoville, SK, Norbert Murphy of Vaudreuil-Dorion, QC and Karen Van Nest of Wiarton, ON had a terrific finish capturing two gold and a silver.

First, Norbert Murphy, Canada’s 2012 Para-Olympian bronze medalist, captured gold in the Compound Bow Men’s ARW1 category after defeating Peter Kinik of Slovakia in a one-shot tie-breaker.

Second Karen Van Nest captured the silver in Compound Bow Class Open Women losing to number one ranked Stepanida Artakhinova of Russia.

However, Karen Van Nest teamed up with Kevin Evans to turn the tables and capture the Gold in the Compound Mixed Team by defeating number one ranked Mikhail Ivanov and Stepanida Artakhinova of Russia.

Congratulations to the whole team on a very successful trip to CzechRepublic.

Bronze for Canadian’s Mixed Team

Canada captured the compound mixed team bronze medal at FITA World Cup in Turkey in June. After finishing 15^th in the qualifying round the team of Dietmar Trillus of Ontario and Ashley Wallace of Alberta had an uphill battle, first facing the second ranked Korean team. After defeating Korea 151-148, they faced seventh ranked Mexico narrowly winning 151-150 to face third ranked India.

After losing 154-147, Canada faced Amir KAZEMPOOR  and Mino ABEDI of Iran who were ranked fourth after the qualifiers.  With winds causing arrows to drift to the left, Iran posted two 7s in the first end, allowing Canada to take an early lead, 36-33 and to eventually go on to capture the bronze with a score of 150-141

Sergio PAGNI and Marcella TONIOLI of eighth ranked Italy captured the Gold medal defeating India in the Gold Medal match.

Congratulations!!!