Norfolk Archery Spring Newsletter

Welcome to 2019, spring is in the air, the ‘Beast from the East’ never re-appeared, and there are already lots of exciting things happening in the archery world.

First off, we have some changes to the committee:
Pete Hill has taken on the role of Chair as well as his safeguarding role;
Derek Sizeland has taken on the role of Treasurer as well as his coaching role;
David Dowle aka Duffy has taken on the team manager role;
David Long has taken on the Development Officer role alongside his ever-present role as Records Officer.
We’d like to thank the efforts of those who have held these roles in the past and have stepped down, we appreciate all your efforts and hope to still see you around on the shooting line.

We have also made some updates to the website.
There is now a ‘Hall of Excellence‘ page where you can find information about past County winners both indoors and outdoors.
We have updated the Calendar page and design to hopefully make it a bit more visual.
Finally we have a new page, the Archers Blog, which has just gone live. This is a public submission page, where anyone can submit a post (and a couple of images) about their archery exploits. This lets you tell us what has been going on, and if there are some particularly interesting stories we may make a feature out of these.

Message from the Chair:
Welcome all to our newsletter,

Some of you may know that I took over as Chair of the Norfolk Association at the Annual General Meeting this year. I am pleased to be able to represent you Regionally and Nationally when the need arises. I’m sure, some of you will have seen many new Chair’s over the years and are probably thinking that this one will be nothing new. Well, I hope to surprise you.

If herding cats is difficult, managing the NAA, is already proving to be challenging. We are a group of individuals that are as unique as each of our clubs. And we really do have very different clubs across the County.

But here’s the good news. We will endeavour to send you a regular blog of the events, tournaments and other news so that we are in communication with you all as we go along. Our blog page will be interactive so your views will be shared across the county, if you’d like that.

Some folk ask, “What does the NAA do for me?” And this is a good question. Here’s what we are doing at the moment…

I’m not sure if this is for the first time, but we are now supporting our archers to take part in tournaments. The County team has already been selected to compete against Cambridge at the up and coming Tournament at the City of Norwich Archers venue on the 24th March. The NAA wishes to thank David ‘Duffy’ Dowle for his work on this. I know it has been difficult but we seem to be overcoming the obstacles. The tournament is a WA25 and I understand there are a few spaces left, if you’d like to take part in that, see below.

We have decided as an Association to support the organisation and effort of arranging tournaments with our surrounding Counties. This, we feel, will empower our archers to take part in tournaments and not have to travel too far to other locations.

Finally, one of our clubs is hosting a tournament at Holkham House in Norfolk and the NAA has decided to make this tournament free to all Norfolk Archery Association Club Members. This is by far no mean feat and comes at a cost to both the NAA and you as an archer should you wish to take part. Your cost… well, there is also a have-a-go happening on the same day hosted by Norfolk Bowmen and we’d be so very happy if you could help out for a short while with the newby archers. You will get free access to the tournament and free access to Holkham House and the Country Fair being held on the two days over that weekend. Please download the file should you wish to take part. https://1drv.ms/b/s!AgeXZJ4c7bkcgbB-z6fCIXN2Ah0VzA.

In addition, we are continuing our work with clubs and have NAA Officers available to visit your club so that you can pick the brains of our experienced Archers and Club Officers. This approach, we are hoping, will encourage a programme of club development approaches that we feel will support the growth of archery in Norfolk. If you would like a visit, please email david.long47@ntlworld.com, who will be happy to arrange a suitable time.

More news is on the way, but should you wish to contact me please do so, using chair@norfolkarchery.info.

Good luck with your archery and happy shooting.

Pete: Chair, Norfolk Archery Association

Competitions:

We have already had the Indoor County Championships, with a great turnout of over 60 different archers and 10 clubs represented. We’d like to thank City of Norwich Archers for the great job they did hosting the shoot. Results can be found on our website by clicking here

There are also several great shoots coming up during the remainder of the indoor season:

Hingham Bowmen are hosting their exciting Worcester/Hit Miss express combined shoot, where there are both individual Wrocester rounds, as well as a team Hit-Miss express round. This is a shorter version of the Hit-Miss format made famous in Norfolk, and Hingham have done an excellent job of modifying it to work in a smaller time frame. Still a few spaces left so get in quick – this is one not to miss!
Hingham Bowmen Worcester/Hit-Miss

City of Norwich Archers are also holding an unusual shoot, that being a UKRS WA25m. There are not a lot of 25m shoots around due to the limits of most indoor venues, but CoNA’s new venue is one that does allow for this longer shoot. UK Record Status, so awards can be claimed, and hosting an inter-counties shoot between Cambridge and Norfolk, this also proves to be an exciting shoot. Session 2 is full, but there is limited space in session 1, so again get in fast to avoid missing out!
CoNA UKRS WA25m

We also have plenty of outdoor competitions lined up, check out our Calendar page for dates and details!

Coaching:

We have a series of Development Days running during the indoor season. Unfortunately the session at Hingham didn’t get enough applicants to go ahead, but the Wymondham session went ahead successfully, and we are looking forward to another session at City of Norwich Archers in March.
Click here for more info and the registration form.

We also recently had a Level 1 Coaching course run in the County, with lots of successful new coaches coming through and putting their skills into practice.
If you would like any information about coaching within the county please do get in touch with our coaching team.

NAA Meeting:

Our next County meeting will be held on 8th April 2019, starting at 7.30pm.
Venue and Agenda will be confirmed nearer the time, so keep an eye on the website and our social media for updates.
All members are welcome to attend and to speak on any of the items on the agenda, so save the date and we hope to see you there.

That’s all for this newsletter, sorry it was on the long side, so thanks for sticking with it.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please do let us know, and please do check out the blog page to upload your stories.

Happy shooting