Clubs

There is a long line of things that have to fall in place before you can compete in archery.  First you have to have a USA archery membership.  Once you have your membership it allows you to compete in all the non-JOAD tournaments hosted my USA archery.  To participate in the Joad events/tournaments you havento be part of a USA archery registered club.  I myself am belonged to the club Vanguard held in Van Nuys.  There are many other clubs all over California and all over the USA.  Some clubs exmples are: Joy Lee, Pasadena, Oak Tree Archers, and Woodly Park archers.  Only kids from 8-18 can join Joad tournaments but people of all ages can join the club.  The club can do many events and things to help the young archers.  The club can pay a coach to privately coach the kids or the club can be at a public park with no private coach and its just the kids analyze there own forms.  All in all public park would be cheaper, but it still does the job of getting the kids into tournaments under a club.  Yet it lacks the intensely of private and one on one coaching that helps the kids axcel quickly and at a gradual pace.

Indoor Goals

Indoor Nationals has been here and gone.  No one expected it to come around so fast.  It was sadly the last of the indoor tournaments though.  The only three indoor tournaments of the year are all in two months January and February.  After these months everything changes, from shooting 18 meters with no wind to 70 meters up to 5 mile an hour winds.  For state I shot a 1114 with four scores consisting of: 271, 275, 283, and 285.  For indoor nationals I wanted to beat this score and rank in the top 5.  For state I shot the in the cub division, for nationals I was going to shoot up into the cadet division with 17 year olds.  From 2/18/16-2/21/16 I shot at Chula Vista for nationals.  I shot a score consisting of: 278, 282, 283, and 280 for a total of 1123.  Dissapointing bwcause I was 1 point from third place.  So far I am in third but there is another two weeks of competitions around the nation.  I am hoping I dont drop any places.  My goal is to stay in the top 5 for all nationals so I can get on the USAT team which competes internationally.

Indoor Nationals

This past week from 2/18/16-2/21/16 was Indoor Nationals.  Both tournaments Joad and Nationals where held at a new location this year.  The new locations for Joad and Nationals was Chula Vista at the Olympic Training Center but they also held Nationals this year at the old venue because of how many participants there was.  This is the longest tournament of the year stretching over two months because of all the locations that have to send in the scores to USAA.  So if your the first location to finish because because its a 3 day tournament in technically, then u have to wait the full time to know your actual standings.  You could be 1st the first week but by the emd you could be pushed down to even 20th place.  Thats mainly dependent on score how much you drop in ranking.  The JOAD tournament is only one day and is always on Friday, and Nationals is Saturday and Sunday.  Nationals is a full Indoor Fita which is out of 1200 maximum points.  This year was Nationals 47th year in a row.

Up and coming

This week there was the first of the JDT camps.  The camps designed to push you to your limits and train you to be a future olympian.  Once you get picked for JDT you get to pick your top three coach choises.  You dont always get who you want but all coaches our the top level five coaches who help coach the olympic team.   For this weeks camp I didnt go for various reasons.  Yes once on JDT you are required to attend two training camps every year, untill you graduate.  I was only informed of the dates for two camps so at first I was worried that I had and it was manditory to attend this camp,  but then I was informed that there are four camps a year.  The first and main reason I didnt attend the first JDT camp was because of the timing and how close it was to nationals.  I didnt want to have any major form changes before a major tourmament like Indoor nationals.  If it was before state indoor or Vegas shoot then I would have definitly gone.  Reason number two is the camp is being held at the same place as the event of Indoor nationals so I didnt want the coaches that just changed my form to see/pressure me during this big event.  Mainly I didnt go because of form changes and the pressure of maintaining the form during the big event.