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.

ARCHERY COACH HONOURED AT SPORT LEADERSHIP AWARDS GALA

Canadian Archery coach Joan McDonald (Richmond Hill, ON) was one of a number of Canada’s top coaches that were honoured at the Petro-Canada Sport Leadership Awards Gala, hosted by the Coaching Association of Canada (CAC), this past weekend in Calgary. McDonald was a recipient of the Petro-Canada Coaching Excellence Award. This prestigious award recognizes coaches whose athletes have excelled at World Championships, Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Special Olympics World Games.

McDonald is the personal coach of Crispin Duenas (Toronto, ON), who won the bronze  medal in the Men’s Recurve Bow category at the 2013 World Archery Championship in Belek Antalya, Turkey (September 29^th – October 6^th). The bronze medal marked the first time in 42 years that Canada had finished on the podium at a World Championship in the Men’s Recurve individual category.

McDonald has been personal coach to Duenas for the past 13 years. She is also the founder and Head Coach of the Bullseye Buccanneers Archery Club in Richmond Hill, Ontario.  McDonald has been instrumental in the development of Duenas as an archer from the ‘Learn to Shoot’ stage of Archery Canada’s Long-Term Archer Development (LTAD) model through to the ‘Shoot to Excel’ stage. “Joan’s confidence in my abilities and her keen attention to the coaching of the technical and psychological aspects of archery, have led to my steady progress and success at the national and international levels”, said Duenas.  “I have no doubt that without Joan’s coaching and guidance, I wouldn’t have been on the podium at Worlds. I’m also sure that under Joan’s continued coaching, I’m on the path to a long and successful career as a high performance archer.”

“I’m thrilled and honoured to have won this prestigious award. Crispin is a tremendous young man and athlete with lots of potential”, said McDonald. “My sincere thanks and appreciation to Petro-Canada and the CAC.”  Archery Canada

Congratulations Joan!

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!!!

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.

Bronze for Canadian Archer at 2013 World Cup

Canadian compound bow archer Dietmar Trillus (King City, ON) brought home the bronze medal from this season’s 3rd World Cup of Archery event which wrapped-up Sunday in Medellin, Colombia.

The World Cup of Archery series began in 2006. The 4th and final stage of the World Cup series takes place August 19-25 in Wroclaw, Poland. The World Cup final is September 21-22 in Paris. Trillus will try to qualify for his 4th World Cup final since he began to compete on the circuit in 2008. He won the World Cup final in 2008 and was crowned 2007 World Champion in the Compound Bow category. Read More on Archery Canada…

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!!!

Archery takes you places

Once you decide to become a competitive archer you will need to start planning to travel. Traveling is a big part of competitive archery, and the higher the level of competition, the further you need to travel.

Indoor archery can take you all over the planet at the upper levels however most competitions can be “mailed-in” because the conditions are controllable. For indoor archery, I have had the pleasure of visiting Louisville, Kentucky a couple of times for the NFAA Indoor Championships and Las Vegas, Nevada for the World Indoor Championships.

Since, hosting any outdoor archery tournament requires a fair amount of space, in Canada, you will need to travel a lot. Canada is the world’s second largest country by total area and stretches about 5000 KM (3000 Miles) from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean.  Since 2009 to participate in the Canadian National Outdoor Championships I have visited Laval, Quebec; Halifax, Nova Scotia; Delisle, Saskatchewan; Victoria, British Columbia and this year our family will travel to Woodstock, New Brunswick.

Even competing at the provincial level requires a lot of travel since the province of Ontario is larger than Egypt, Spain or France and therefore even for Provincial competitions you will have to travel a lot. I have visited London, Sudbury, Ottawa, New Market, Petawawa, Caledon, Athens, Peterborough, Toronto and Sault Ste. Marie. All this and I do not participate in every tournament.

Budget is a large factor in participation; our family uses our family vacation budget to participate in tournaments. Unfortunately, only the highest level of Canadian archer receive funding to help pay for travel, lodgings, tournament fees and equipment. For the rest of us, it often falls on us or our parents to help fund those Olympic dreams.

So if you are planning to venture in the realms of competitive archery, I offer the same advice that was afforded to me when I started. “Start saving now” however be assured that it is a worthwhile investment.

Getting Information

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to help beginner archers find archery information. The biggest challenge I found starting out was getting information about various tournaments, equipment, etc…. thankfully I have an extremely helpful and knowledgeable coach who helped me find the information I wanted.

A lot of my readers are beginner archers and utilize this blog and many others to find archery information. Do you know other locations to find reliable archery information besides blogs?

Worldwide the main governing body for archery is the World Archery Federation formerly known as Fédération Internationale de Tir à l’Arc (FITA). It is based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is composed of 140 national archery associations, and is recognized by the International Olympic Committee. Wikipedia

For Field Archery the Worldwide governing body is the International Field Archery Association. The IFAA is an archery association that was founded 1970 when a group of field archers from the USA, Sweden, England, Scotland, Wales and Canada agreed on a set of basic rules by which Field Archery tournaments would be run. The IFAA now represents over 50 000 field archers in over 40 member countries from all continents.

Additionally, the International Bowhunting Organization (IBO) that was created in 1984 by a dedicated group of bowhunters who shared the desire to ensure that bowhunting and the ideals of wildlife conservation will survive, expand and flourish to be shared, enjoyed and passed on to future generations. 

For North Americans there are a couple of major archery associations including the Archery Canada (formerly known as the Federation of Canada Archers or FCA). Archery Canada is members of both the World Archery Association and International Field Archery Association and is composed of nine provincial archery associations including British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Yukon.  Archers who are members of the provincial clubs are automatically members of Archery Canada and are eligible to participate in national tournaments.

In the United States, there are separate associations that are affiliated with the two major organizations. USA Archery is the member of World Archery Federation and the National Field Archery Association is the member of International Field Archery Association. Each USA association are comprised of state archery associations. Additional USA Archery has a special Junior Development Program known as JOAD. The Junior Olympic Archery Development (JOAD) is a program of USA Archery that teaches archery to young people, provides great opportunities for awarding achievement, and helps archers to enjoy the sport recreationally or progress to the excitement of competition!

At the local level, most archery clubs are affiliated with an Archery association and can provide information about national membership, opportunities for development, upcoming tournaments, and provide insight and order various archery equipment. To find an archery association in your area, start with the Wikipedia national members for World Archery Federation and for local clubs in your area try searching the web.

Please continue to visit my website for all kinds of information about archery, training, tips and tricks, upcoming tournaments and all things archery and continue to ask any questions you may have.