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.

Preparing to take on the World

The 2012 World Archery Indoor Championships in Las Vegas, Nevada are less than a month away, and I am equally excited and nervous. This will be my first experience at the World level and I am trilled about enjoying it with my junior recurve team mates, Virginie Chenier of Quebec and Caitlin Northey of Saskatchewan. I am sure that we will gel as a team however since we all live in various provinces we will develop our team round strategy at the hotel on practice days. Speaking of the Hotel, the South Point Hotel and Casino, where the event will be held, is located in the heart of the premiere southwest Las Vegas valley, just minutes away from the famous Las Vegas Strip. According to their website, some of their many amenities include a 16-screen Century Theatre movie complex, 64-lane bowling center and a handful of restaurants that cater to all appetites and tastes.  Their distinctive hotel features spacious rooms and suites with 42-inch plasma televisions, Point Plush mattresses and Wireless Fidelity throughout. A unique feature to this property is its Equestrian Center, which is the finest horse facility in the country. South Point also has a fabulous 400-seat showroom that features headliner entertainment and dancing to live bands on weekends. Although the hotel offers plenty to do, even for those under age of majority (21 in Nevada), I am not sure I will have a lot of time based on the posted schedule for the Championships. The practice venue will be open for both official arrival days, Friday and Saturday, and I plan to get there early on Saturday. The rest of the week looks like the following…

• Day 1 Official Practice & Team Captain Meeting
• Day 2 Qualification Rounds
• Day 3 Individual Eliminations
• Day 4 Team Eliminations
• Day 5 Individual and Team Finals

Immediately following the championships from February 10^th to 13^th is the World Archery Festival, stage 2 of the Indoor Archery World Cup. However, due to the amount of school I would have to miss, I have decided not to participate, instead I will fly home on February 10^th. I look forward to meeting so many new friends from all over the world, and participating in one of the archery world’s premier events. Until then, my focus will be on eliminating all distractions. First and foremost, finish this semester and exams the week before leaving. So rather than setting expectations to high; my goals are simple. First, focus on shooting and ignoring bells, whistles and the bright lights of Las Vegas. Then, give it my best effort each day, focusing on each shot and ignoring any mistakes. Lastly, learn and enjoy the complete experience. If all I bring back is the knowledge of what it takes to compete that the World level, I will succeed. I have been asked a couple of times now, however it is unknown at this time, if they will be streaming a live feed of the competition however results will be posted on the World Indoor website.

Silver at the Pan Am Games

Congratulations to Canada’s Crispin Duenas for capturing a Silver medal at this year’s Pan Am Games in Guadalajara Mexico.

Crispin Duenas participated in the men’s Olympic recurve class and was second after the qualification round with 1337 points and breezed through to the quarterfinals with 6-0 victories over Cristobal Antonio Merlos of El Salvador, Jaim Quintana of Cuba and Jake Kaminski of the USA.  In the semi-finals Crispin faced Daniel Pineda of Colombia, the eventual Bronze medal winner, in a very tough match reaching 5 sets which Crispin won 6-4 to advance to the Gold medal match.

In the Gold medal match, Crispin faced number one ranked Brady Ellison of the United States. Crispin fought until the last arrow in a match as it needed to go to a fifth set. The US archer was ahead 4-2, but in the fourth set Crispin shot a perfect 30 to tie the match. Ellison’s 29 was just a single point better than his Crispin’s 28 in the fifth end, and Ellison captured the Gold with a 6-4 win and Crispin captured the Silver medal.

Congratulations to the entire Canadian team for their efforts at the Pan Am games.

Congratulations Team Canada

This past week the World Youth Championships were held in Legnica, Poland.  Canada was able to send at team of eighteen athletes to compete in all events. All the athletes faired very well however none were able to reach the finals in any event with the exception of one, the men Junior Compound team.

The team’s climb towards the gold medal match was amazing. Their matches lending up to the gold medal match were well shot matches having won against; Greece (218 – 223), Denmark (225 – 232), and USA (223 -227) including a new world record for 24 arrows with 232 against Denmark.

Canada showed ultimate sportsmanship for the gold medal match. With one of the Netherlands athletes requiring medical attention before the match and needing to go to the local hospital for minor injury, Canada agreed to delay the match until the entire Netherlands was able to compete.  Once the match was able to continue it was a very close match since the teams entered match play ranked first (Netherlands) and second (Canada) with the final resulting in a 222 to 220.

The final placing was Canada with the gold, Netherland with the sliver and the USA with the bronze. Congratulations to the Junior Compound Men Team members Keenan Brown, Michael Kupchanko and Christopher Perkins for their amazing victory.

Read more on the FITA Archery site here.

2010 Ontario Summer Games

I have just come back from the Ontario Summer Games (OSG) in Sudbury, Ontario.

The OSG’s are like a mini-Olympics for Ontario’s top athletes under the age of 21 with over 50 events including such sports as Athletics, Lacrosse, Swimming, team sports like basketball and of course Archery. Sixty archers qualified from all over the province of Ontario representing the five different zones (Central, Eastern, Western, North East and North West) and competed in the two-day event.  The OSG archery event includes two Canadian 900 rounds which is 30 arrows shot at each distance of 55m, 45m and 35m each day.

As part of the Eastern Zone Archery team that won a total three metals, I was honoured to come back with the Gold medal in the Cadet Female Recurve division.

A special thank you goes to the Empire Life Insurance Company who very quickly and graciously provided team shirts, when at 4pm the day before we left, the Eastern Zone Archery team was informed our team shirts “fell through the cracks”. Without team shirts, our team’s participation was in jeopardy, since the rules require us to have team shirts to compete. Although I know it is not within Empire Life’s company policy to sponsor sports teams, it was their assistance that helped us walk into the opening ceremonies proudly wearing awesome team shirts and representing Eastern Ontario.

2010 Canadian Championships

Last week, I competed in this years’ Canadian National Archery Championship held in the very scenic Halifax, Nova Scotia. The target championship consisted of a double FITA Star competition for the first 4 days. Target rankings from this event setup the Canadian Open (formerly FCA Open) which is a one-day double elimination match play event. Lastly, I competed in the Field Championship for the final two days.  Here are a couple of links to picture slideshow of the events.

2010 Canadian Archery Championships – Part 1 and Part 2

The tournaments had a variety of weather including blazing heat, rain and high winds with gusts up to 50km/h. The tournament was a great learning experience and also a lot of fun. This year I was fortunate to bring home the bronze in both the Target Championship and Canadian Open and win the silver in the Field competition. I also received my FITA 1100 pin during the target championship and I am getting closer to my 1200 pin everyday.

During the target championship, I discovered a neat use for the extra arm on the Cartel RX-10 bow stand. Because of the high winds, I stored my bow in the stand in the traditional way with the stabilizer-pointing straight up so it would be less likely to tip in the high winds. This allowed me to use the extra arm to store my scorecards securely as illustrated in the picture. The arm can also hold a towel in the rain or your hat while you are shooting. These are just some more reasons why everyone should consider purchasing the new Cartel RX-10 bow stand.