Hertfordshire Archery Association
(Patron: The Marchioness of Salisbury)
the association of target archery clubs in Hertfordshire, England
the association of target archery clubs in Hertfordshire, England
The Association provides support and services to archery clubs and individuals in Hertfordshire. It is affiliated to GNAS and SCAS.
The final results for the senior winter leagues are in. Please go to the Leagues page to find a full set of tables.
Congratulations to all those who took part.
February League scores are now available on the Leagues page.
There has been a further amendment to the Junior Award Scheme Tables and Forms. The scores for Longbows and barebows have been adjusted and the scores for the Purple award have been expanded. Please download the new tables from the junior pages.
After identifying that many of the Counties junior archers were generally only shooting shorter rounds, Stuart Barber, the new County junior representative for Hertfordshire developed an award scheme that hopes to promote the shooting of longer rounds. The award scheme has been received by all clubs in the County with enthusiasm and many have already started their juniors on the scheme.
The first junior to be awarded a badge is Phoebe Holdsworth from Hinxworth Archers. Phoebe has only been shooting for a short while.
Phoebe is the first junior in the County to get any of the award badges and it was a pleasure for Stuart to award her the green badge and a certificate
for the first badge on the new scheme. There are a number of other juniors already taking part in the scheme and since Phoebe shot her qualifying
rounds there have been another 4 juniors already getting badges from the County scheme. It is hoped that the scheme encourages junior members to push
themselves that little bit harder and shoot further and longer rounds as well as getting more involved in competitions and even represent the County.
If any other junior reps wish to know more about the scheme then please contact Stuart at juniors@hertsarchery.org.uk
The clout will be held on the 21st October this year, 1 week later than normal. Apologies to those county archers who attend the nationals, but no other field could be found. Thankyou to Paul Hanson who did sterling work to get us Longdean again
County records updated
Next indoor seasons squad and open training dates are now listed on the diary page
The County Outdoor Submission Sheet, found on the selection policy, has been updated and the FITA 60m round has been modified. Please note that that there is no classification available for the Compound 720 (50 metre) round as per Archery GB as the round is only used for ranking scores for compound head-2-head's. Please can you make sure that the new version (6) is used from now on.
We are looking for any scores of 2nd class classification or over. These scores are not just to select the county teams, they are used by the County Coaching team to finalise a short list of archers to be invited to 2012/2013 County squad training. Squad training is run every 2 weeks throughout the winter months at St Michaels Hall, Branch Road, St Albans, AL3 4SS on a Monday. The sessions cover all aspects of archery including, technical information, video coaching, fitness, mental training, and many other coaching techniques to improve your shooting.
If you are looking to shoot for Hertfordshire, archers are requested to indicate their wish to be considered for selection by completing the Declaration Form provided. This will ensure that the selectors have current contact details. This form is provided in word format for completing electronically or as a PDF File if preferred.
Scores should be submitted to the selection panel either via your club records officer or as an individual directly to selection@hertsarchery.org.uk . Please make sure that they have the results from any external competitions that you have attended. It is however, the archer's responsibility to ensure that those scores are sent in to be considered by the selectors.
There has been a small amendment to the Junior Award Scheme Tables and Forms. If you have already downloaded them, as I am sure you have, could you please re-download them. Sorry for the confusion.
The first claim under the new Junior County Badge Scheme has been made by Phoebe Holdsworth from Hinxworth. Officials from the County Association will present the badge to Phoebe in Hinxworth on Sunday morning the 25th March.
Photos from yesterday's shoot on the Gallery page, put your own captions to these ones please, for instance, picture 052 "No chocolate! I've got an app for that".
Today was the annual inter-counties match between Hertfordshire and Middlesex, it was held at the STAGS over in St Albans and for the first year the two Counties fielded a Junior team. It was a wonderful spring day to be shooting outdoors, pity we were all inside. Anyway, there was mixed success for the County with two of the trophies going to Middlesex for a holiday. There will be some photographs from the shoot but you will have to wait until I get them back from the developers. The compound team led from the outset and with steady scoring across the board ended up 56 points ahead, recurves however struggled from the outset against a very strong Middlesex team and by the end were 72 points adrift, but then that is less than 10 points per archer so not really too far behind. The longbows came up against the on form Roger Spillane and ended 130 points behind. The junior event was, as we described it, a test event and looking at some of the scores we may find that the seniors will want to keep the junior team as part of the fixture as they are all just too good to miss out on a chance to shoot in this environment. They won by the way but for both sets of juniors at least one recurve from each team could have shot for the senior team. Full results are HERE. Many thanks to the working party for all their work and to our judge for the afternoon, Kevin Thurlow (Would you believe it Kevin, it is now 22:05 and I still do not know the rugby score from this afternoon). Oh and sorry to you all for me not bringing the goody bag, I couldn't fit it in the car!
Could Mary be bringing home the bacon? Well they do say that like buses, you wait and wait and then three come along, what am I talking about? More news, Mary Perrott is currently in the running for selection to represent the Junior Ladies at the Europa Cup in Croatia in May, Mary may also be picked for GB team at the European Junior Championships in Denmark in June. We wish you the best of luck, if anyone can let me know the website covering these tournaments I will put a link to it here so we can all follow progress.
And if that isn't enough, H.C.A.s Rebecca Blewett has been invited to attend a shoot-off next weekend(3 girls picked for 1 remaining place) for the Cadet ladies also at the Europa Cup in Croatia. Go for it Rebecca!
January League scores are now available on the Leagues page, things are getting pretty tight in some of the mid table tussles. Also check out the Coach Resource Pages accessible via the Coaching and Beginners page.
It seems that I got over exited at the County Championships and forgot to explain the comments put with the photographs of Gaynor after she had been presented with HAA Coach of the Year, many apologies for the oversight Gaynor after a well deserved award and my thanks to Dave Leader for supplying the following resume.
" Gaynor Hutchison was named as Herts Coach of the Year for 2011/2012. Gaynor has had a busy 12 months with successfully completing her county coach award and with juggling the course with the day job and her own shooting has been no mean feat. Gaynor has also taking over the reigns for the Herts squad winter training. This is now in its 2nd full year under her guidance. The sessions are well planned, communication is excellent, and the talks that have/are to be put on are interesting, informative. The squad session have been improved no end. On the club front Gaynor has been instrumental in setting up and running a week club coaching session within Green Dragon Bowmen (GDB). The sessions have been run both indoor and outdoor on a weekly basis since May last year. This has been a great success and between 10 to 15 archers are regularly turning up to the sessions. Gaynor has also been helping the GDB coaching team to improve the skill base and this has allowed the club to benefit no end. I feel this would be a fitting tribute for all of the hard work that Gaynor has put in over the last 12 months."
Hot off the press, many congratulations to Tony Ferguson for being named Southern Counties Archery Society's Regional Coach of the Year at this years Coaching conference. Those who have worked with him or benefited from his enthusiasm and dedication to the task of bringing on Archers in the County will agree with me that it was well deserved.
The rise of the Juniors has started! All club secretaries have now been e-mailed with details of the new County Junior Badge Scheme along with forms to send in and claim. Who will be the first to claim one of the Badges? Juniors need to have shot 3 qualifying scores for each badge they go for so lets hope it's a sunny day on Sunday. And if you look to the left of the page there is now a link to the Junior section. Like all junior archers it is currently small, quiet and unassuming but hopefully with your help it will grow into the websites equivalent of Jonty or Rebecca! I can't wait.
Full results are now available for the Indoor Championships 2012. CLICK HERE Check out the Gallery as more photographs will be added to the Indoor Champs album in the next couple of days.
Congratulations to all the archers who shot at the weekend. I know there were some dissapointed archers but there were also a lot of very satisfied ones as well and that is what it is all about. Watch this space for full results shortly, in the mean time there are some photographs on the Gallery page for you.
The target list for this weekend's tournament is available here. Please be aware that there may be some changes on the day so do remember to check when you book in.
December senior league results are now available, have a look at those Portsmouth scores, it looks like there will be some stiff competition this weekend at the Indoor Championships. Good luck everyone, I'll see you there.
Do you want to shoot for the County? Do you wonder why other people get picked but you believe you are a better archer? Can you shoot near to or better than the scores given on the selection page?
Then have you sent in your Declaration form for 2012? without it the selectors will not be able to consider you. The deadline for the Herts Middlesex match is fast approaching and as yet there are not enough scores being submitted. If you have been shooting at a suitable level then have your scores been submitted. Ask your records officer but don't forget, it is your responsibility to ensure the selectors get the information they need. One more thing, did you know we are hoping to field a junior team this year? All you juniors out there who can shoot a portsmouth round, why not get your scores submitted the same as the seniors. Please don't assume that everyone else is better than you, you might be pleasantly surprised.
With less than 2 weeks to go to the County Indoor Championships, the latest status is that the D session is now fully booked. There are one or two spaces on the C session but for those who prefer to shoot on the Saturday, the A session has spaces but not as many as the B session.
As always the organiser would like to ask all last year's trophy winners to make sure that they bring their trophies back, clean and engraved, after all it is possible you might not win it back. And a special request to all clubs to donate raffle prizes, I bet you didn't get to drink all those bottles of Moet over Christmas. Once again, just drop the organiser an e-mail with an idea of what to expect, it makes his job that much easier when he knows what is going to turn up
And finally for now, the AGM was held last night, despite lower than usual numbers attending it was good to know that membership numbers were up last year with a healthy increase in juniors. And for the Juniors, keep watching this space as we will have details of a County wide award scheme for you in the coming weeks, but be warned, if you start right at the bottom and work your way through, I doubt if you will be able to stand under the weight of all those badges.
Happy New Year to you all. With the festivities almost over it is time to start planning for the coming months ( if you hadn't already started ). The County AGM is fast approaching so there is little time to waste, new faces are always welcome and as usual we will be looking for nominations for all officer posts. I would ask you all to seriously consider how you could help this year in what everyone says will be an important time for archery in this country. Every club that is currently affiliated through the county has a right to a voice but we still do not get representatives from all clubs at committee meetings. If you don't think you are quite ready to take on County Chairman why not start with volunteering to be your club representative?
And before we know it, the Indoor Championships will be upon us. There are 4 sessions to chose from spread over the Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th February. If you have a prefered session the sooner the organiser receives your entry the more chance there will be of spaces being available.
Forms are available for all County archers wishing to be considered for selection to shoot for the County in 2012. If you think you might be at the levels required (see selection pages) then get your form in so that the selection panel knows you actually wish to be considered. The onus is on you to tell us you want to shoot.
With best wishes to you all for a very Happy Christmas and an accurate New Year. Many thanks to all those who have worked so hard throughout the year both at club and County to ensure we all get to enjoy our archery. For the rest of us, don't forget your resolutions for 2012, we can always do with more volunteers. And finally, to those of you who will be representing us all at the Olympic games in the summer, have a restful Christmas and a successful 2012. . . . Now where did I put those sprouts?
After the last County Committee meeting an e-mail was sent out to all club secretarys asking them to do two things. The first was to confirm receipt of the e-mailand the second to distribute the contents to all their club members. What we needed was someone to come forward who was prepared to run the 2012 County Indoor Championships. We had a deadline after which this tournament would just not happen. Well I can tell you that there were several clubs who did not respond to confirm receipt of the e-mail and because of this we can only assume that you as club members are not being informed what your County organisation is doing for archery in Hertfordshire. If you are one of these people, please ask your club committee to tell you what is happening. As a result of the second request I can tell you that at the eleventh hour someone did come forward and many thanks to John Postoyko for agreeing to organise this tournament for us. The entry form can be downloaded from the usual place, or by clicking on the hyperlink HERE. You should all be in no doubt that if organisers are not forthcoming the County can no longer just fall back on the few who already do so much to ensure things happen. We still need an organiser for the County outdoor championships in July. Without a volunteer the shoot will not happen. The same applies to other County tournaments. No one is left to just get on with it and there is plenty of support from previous organisers but we do need more people to get involved. 2012 will be an interesting year for our sport let's hope it will not be just at the Olympics that we get new volunteers.