What a month, so much going on and so many successes it was almost impossible to find the time to report it!
More National Records!
Our juniors just keep on smashing National Records, with 7 different juniors getting in on the act. During May, James Howse, Lucy Mason & Hamish Ponton broke a host of National, Regional & County Records during a Metric/FITA weekend at Evesham, then at Black & Gold Nicole beating her own National Record that she had set a week earlier by 180 points! That makes 13 National Records for our juniors this year!
Charlotte Luny, Tom Howse and James Lawton had already recorded National Records earlier in the year!
James & Lucy also achieved their GB qualification scores during the month and Hamish became the first member of the club, ever, to achieve Junior Master Bowmen (JMB) status shooting Barebow!
James, Lucy, Hamish & Beckie
Well done Tom!
Tom got a Personal Best (1234 on a Metric 1) on his debut for the GB Junior Recurve team in the Europa Cup taking place in Slovenia and has now been selected to travel to Romania in the next round of the Europa Cup.
Tom representing GB in Slovenia!
Improvers Course a great success
As one of the biggest clubs in the UK, one of our challenges is how we successfully integrate new members into the club. The challenge was made even greater when we decided to run 4 separate beginners courses during the same time period!
We are pleased to confirm that the approach we decided to take was an outstanding success and will be adopted for all future intakes!
We ran a 6 week Improvers Programme immediately after completion of the beginners course and prior to individuals joining the club. Features included shooting at much greater distances, introduction to field archery event, hosted visits to Wales Archery who kindly opened for 3 late evenings, allocation of buddies and an equipment maintenance workshop. The conclusion of the 40 participants that have subsequently joined the club and the coaches involved was that this level of support is essential! We will continue to offer this approach to all beginners courses.
Another beginners course of 15 has just completed and participants are just starting on their Improvers Programme.
Improvers Course – Field Course Introduction
Membership tops 200!
Yes we have broken the 200 barrier. This figure includes shooting and non shooting members. Being such a large club will bring challenges but they are far outweighed by the advantages! This figure does not include all the participants in our numerous after-school clubs which would actually double the figure!
Archery GB Talent Identification Programme
Steph & Dan are working with 7 juniors who have decided to attend the 2013 Talent ID Programme. Introduction to the Skills & Drills Programme is a key part of the preparation. Steph & Dan are also running a skills & drills workshop for the rest of the county.
Field captain Training
The training of 20 members has been completed. Thanks to all those involved in designing and delivering the course. 3 participants have expressed an interest in further formal training! The Club decided that in view of so many attendees at practice sessions that it needed to increase the pool of volunteers able to help and ensure we were providing the best level of range control possible.
Evening Practice Session.
Club nominated for 2 more awards!
Archery GB have nominated us for the 4th year running for the Sport & Recreation Alliance Club of the Year Award. Active Gloucestershire invited us to submit an application for the Sport England ‘Sportivate’ Project of the year. Watch this space!
School Games
The County wide programme is in full swing and during May we organized the District Competitions to determine which schools would compete in the County Level 3 finals taking place at Hartpury College in June. Congratulations to Balcarras, Cleve, Archway, Kingshill and Millbrook.
There will be a total of 80 archers competing, representing 16 schools in the team and individual competitions. During the lead up to this the club has worked in 54 schools with 1150 pupils in the last 12 months. This level of activity has necessitated 32 Club members comprising coaches and experienced senior/junior archers volunteering their time to support the activities.
The programmes are operating at secondary and primary level and the primary highlight last month was the Cotswold District event where 8 Primary Schools competed in an all day event.
Balcarras After-school club
Progress is good on the ‘Buying our own ground project’.
Significant progress has been made in the activities necessary to buy our own ground. We have developed our understanding of what we need to do as a club to structure ourselves to meet the challenges, have formed a working group to take things forward, have refined our 3 year business plan, completed the outline plans for our Planning Application and now working with the Tewkesbury Borough Council Planning Department to gain approval.
We have just submitted our first formal application for external funding support and held preliminary meetings with Active Gloucestershire to determine how they can support us.
An audit of our member’s skills and how they can help the project is almost complete and we are fortunate that we have so many varied and great talents within our ranks!
We issued a Funding Activities Catalogue to all members and have just launched the first 2 activities, the Ebay initiative and a car boot sale.
A flier seeking support of local businesses and a document to be issued to all adult members enabling them to approach their employers have been drafted and are being proof read prior to issue.
Key information promoting our project.
Disability Projects
Great news on this front, subject to completing the definition and timeline of one of our disability projects Archery GB have awarded us £7000 to help us achieve our aims of increasing participation. Active Gloucestershire have also supported us making an application for almost £10,000 for an ‘Awards for All’ Project which will deliver a new programme of activities that will aim to improve the health of young people and adults with physical and learning impairments, through using archery as an engagement tool. There is no overlap between these two projects however they certainly mutually beneficial and both will require a significant increase in the number of coaches required to sustain the activity. We will be running 2 Level 1 Courses starting late September.
Dave Sandles our Club Disability Advisor will be busy over the next 12 months!
Wow, impressive shooting last Saturday at practice!
Entering Competitions is our target!
It is great to see so many entering competitions and we want to encourage all members to give it a try.
A good example is Pete & Anna (father & daughter) who have only recently completed the beginners/improvers programme and decided to enter the Bowman of the Deans competition, Anna had a great day recording 927 and winning a trophy, Pete recorded a very respectable 427 on his first National!
To help all those that have not competed before, we have a couple of dates in mind to run our own competition and help members to give it a try.
Anna & Pete, just off the improvers programme and competing already!
Ontarget Specialism Feathers
As the only club in the UK that has achieved all 3 of the Specialisms (Young People, Community & Performance) we now have the complete set of feathers! (Flags). We will bring them along to a practice session and get a group photograph to record history being made!
Just the one last year, now we have all three Specialisms!
