Liesure centre archery courses

[7,3,miss]

Red Feather Award is part of the FITA beginners award system. It lays out clearly defined competencies and outcomes that an archer has to meet in order to be able to claim an award. These are not just score based but include bits on consistency in stance, drawing, bow assembly and arrow collection and retrieval. In my opinion it will probably give a better grounding in the sport than that which is offered by some club beginner courses.

It has been pushed by GNAS (although not particularly hard) and I would have thought that any club that teaches beginners or runs beginners courses would know about it.

http://www.texasarchery.org/Photos/FITAawards/FITABeginnersAwards.pdf

Page 5 is where you should be looking but the whole document is worth a read.

I would say that if your leisure centre is running this award then they are doing you a favour in giving your prospective members a good basic grounding in a variety of archery skills and techniques.

This is far above and beyond what you would usually associate with Leisure Centre type courses so may I suggest you go along to the centre and buy the man a beer!!

Andy

[Deadeye Doc]

Originally Posted by clickerati

AHA! Here you go!

Thanks for this link, Clicki. However, the document is password protected and locked for printing. Pity, particularly as the GNAS website is not currently accessible. They seem to have vanished! Lets hope it's a temporary glitch. It is an excellent checklist for what should be taught at a club beginners' course. The Texas archery weblink does not work either with Firefox or IE7, and I have tried to find this on the TA website.

I have to agree that anything that promotes (safe) archery as a sport has got to be applauded.

[Trunkles]

All the details are on the beginners award CD which cost £5 - there was an order form on the GNAS website when it was launched. I think Sue Williamson was the contact on the form.

[7,3,miss]

Strange as the texarch link worked before

try this one

FITA > Development > Coaching

You should be able to download and print from this


Andy

[Chase Archer]

Originally Posted by Trunkles

All the details are on the beginners award CD which cost £5 - there was an order form on the GNAS website when it was launched. I think Sue Williamson was the contact on the form.

Quite right Trunkles, Sue Williamson is the person to contact to buy the CD and it is £5.

[grimsby archer]

the texarch link has just got too many http's at the beginning.

red feather award is for under 12's shooting at 6m?

Arrow awards are for over 12's.

I always wondered why FITA sell the badges at $2 (yes two dollars) a peice, yet GNAS charge a whopping £5 (five quid!!!!) and the FITA manual is free to download from the FITA website, but you have to pay another £5 to GNAS for the GNAS-ised version on CD. Talk about profitteering!

[ChrisNI]

ive nearly finished a 6 week beginner course at a local leisure centre, being taught by a coach from the NIAS club which is held at the same venue. as part of the course, safety is a major aspect, we've also had people talk to us about the history or archery including the warbow and the different types of arrow points etc as well as being told about the structure of clubs and affiliated groups throughout the world.
using the flat bows provided i have been able to get good groups (yes i use my mouth as an anchorage point, ive found it useful to keep my draw length consistant and my loosing smooth) and it has given me confidence and made the prospect of joining a club less daunting.
if the first post is anything to go by, should i now go back to thinking that joining a club daunting???

[FlourPower]

Not at all, its just people worrying about you being safe and competant. Just turn up, listen to see if there are different rules or idiosynchronuseseses at your new club. Shoot safely and be considerate to other archers as they should be to you.

If in doubt ask someone and its always nice to see someone ask where they can get some help to improve.

[Hidden Hippo]

To be honest, its generally a formality at all clubs to "vet" new members to make sure they are safe. I've shot for 4 years now, but recently joined 2 new clubs, one at uni and one at home. At both they just had someone watch me for a few ends to make sure I was safe when I was shooting and in general when approaching the target.

I'm quite glad that these sorts of procedures are in place, but with regards to red feather courses etc, they give a good basic grounding in the sport and also give the coach at your new club an idea of what you're capable of. As FlourPower said, find your local club and arrange a time to go along and shoot with them. In all likelihood they will insist that for the first session you are supervised by a coach, but I doubt (unless the club is very closed) there would be any problem.

Good shooting.

[ChrisNI]

no worries, thanks guys!