Girl Guides

Before I was in archery, before I competed internationally in robotics, I was a Girl Guide. Girl Guides is a parallel movement to Boy Scout for girls in 1909, Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting decided that girls should not be part of Scouts.  Therefore, in 1910 Robert’s wife Agnes started the Girls Guides, named after a famous frontier regiment in the British Indian Army, the Corps of Guides. Guiding makes a positive difference in the life of every girl and woman who experiences Guiding so she can contribute responsibly to her communities.

The Girl Guides of Canada’s goal is to develop confident, courageous and resourceful girls who will make a difference in the world.  Girl Guide values are

• I Promise to do my best,
• To be true to myself, my beliefs and Canada
• I will take action for a better world
• And respect the Guiding Law

The Guiding Law challenges me to:

• be honest and trustworthy
• use my resources wisely
• respect myself and others
• recognize and use my talents and abilities
• protect our common environment
• live with courage and strength
• share in the sisterhood of Guiding.

My introduction to Girl Guides at a young age has helped develop me into the person I am today. I started as a Spark, continued through Brownies, until I graduated from Guides at which point I had collected two full badge scarves and the coveted Lady Baden Powell award.

This past weekend, I was invited to a Girl Guide camp to introduce archery to a group of Girl Guides. It was a real trip down memory lane and it was a lot of fun to see young girls enjoying the same experience that I did when I was young. I remember the Saturday afternoon events at camp were always my highlight of the weekend.  This time, it was my turn to make it the best part of the whole day and teach this new group of guides how to shoot a bow and arrow. Everyone loved it, so much so I actually had a little 9 year old girl come up to me and hug me telling me how much she loved it.

To witness someone enjoy the sport and love it as much as you is the best part of being a coach. Being a part of the start of a new dream in another person’s life is so rewarding, and gives you the unwavering desire to do it over and over again.

Without people willing to help develop new dreams in kids, there may not be as many adults with successful dreams.

London 2012 – Archery Guide

Check out this article published by The Telegraph in the United Kingdom. It provides an overview of Olympic archery including Tactics and Techniques. It also has a very nice introduction to archery video by 5 time Great Britain Olympian, Alison Williamson.

A sport’s guide to the archery event at the London 2012 Olympics.

South Nation on CTV

On Valentine Day’s, CTV and Sarah Freemark visited my home archery club, South Nation Archery Club in Winchester, Ontario for a basic introduction to shooting a bow and arrow. My coach Kathy Millar, introduces recurve, compound, longbow and even a crossbow to Sarah as she receives here first archery lesson.

You can watch the segments here on YouTube…

• Segment 1
• Segment 2
• Segment 3
• Segment 4

The Ontario Junior Challenge

During off years of the Ontario Summer Games, Ontario holds the Junior Challenge.  This tournament is a great introduction into outdoor competitions for young archers under 21 years of age.

The Junior Challenge is a held over two-days and consists of two Canadian 900 rounds with all archers shooting the same format as the Ontario Summer Games with distances of 55M, 45M and 35M on a 122 cm FITA target face.  One truly great quality about the Ontario Junior Challenge is there are no qualifying scores required and it is a great training event for archers who are interested in participating in the Ontario Summer Games next year.

This year’s challenge will be held in London, Ontario on June 4^th and 5^th hosted by the London City Archers.   If you are interested in participating in the Ontario Junior Challenge or would like to find out more information about the tournament, you can contact Lana Perry of the OAA or checkout the Ontario Junior Challenge Event page on Facebook.