President’s Address

29 August 06

Greetings Fellow Archers and Friends,

Pesta Sukan 2006 Competition

Don’t forget that this weekend is the PS 2006 Shoot and all Team Captains are reminded of the following:

  1. Team Captain Meeting is on Friday night at 7 pm at the competition venue itself. You must be present to receive last minute briefing and to collect the lane assignments as well as the number tags. Just one representative will do. Ideally it should be the coach.
  2. Remember to ensure that your equipment meets all FITA requirements. This is especially so in the Standard Bows Category where the 122 mm ring rule will be put into force. In this Category, the judges will be especially on the lookout for illegal finger tabs (remove that bracer folks, finger separators are okay), bow string (must be Dacron or lower), sight (must not be with micro-windage adjustment), risers (wooden or metal), limbs (wood or glass laminate), arrows (XX75 platinum or lower, Carbon flash or lower, Jazz, Red Stalker). Oh yes, don’t forget to do your equipment inspection with your bow unstrung.
  3. The Judges will also be especially on the lookout for dress code conformance. If you are not sure about the proper dress code, check with your coach. Basically, you should be dressed decently. This means:

    1. No Sandals or slippers or flip flops or any open top footwear. Best to wear sports shoes and everyone will be happy.
    2. Shorts can be worn but it cannot be shorter than the extended fingers placed by its side. Students who are wearing their school shorts must be very careful here as most of the school PE shorts are a no-no at the archery competitions. Best to wear normal length trousers. Remember, cargo or ¾ pants are not allowed. Denims (which mean Jeans) are also not allowed as are collarless tee shirts.
    3. Teams must be in their team uniforms (black is black and not faded shade of blacks, etc) tops. Next year, team uniforms will be the full complete set of tops and bottoms.

Yes, I know it seems draconian but these are the actual rules as laid down by FITA and we must learn to abide by them. Pretending they don’t exists or ignoring them will not be good for the sport if we aspire to be a potent force. I believe we must do it right and the correct way is by the book.

National Judges' Course

The Judges committee has put together a very interesting course covering major aspects of the rules of archery. Please see the details under “Courses.”. I took this course a year or so ago and I benefited greatly from it because my knowledge of the rules of the game improved tremendously. I am sure you will too. You will be able to do the course practically for free as your course fee of $40 will be returned to you once you have served in at least 2 major tournaments as part of your practical assessment.

Registration is on a first informed first reserved basis and I believe the course is filling up fast. Don’t wait. Email myself or Leong and reserve your seat or be disappointed.

Vendors’ Listing

Over the past few weeks, I have received quite a few enquiries about purchases of archery equipment, range availability, clubs to join, etc. Some of these are from far away places like Germany, and Africa , whilst most are local or are expatriates who are working here for the first time.

I have decided that AAS can help our local archery businesses reach out to these people.

All vendors dealing directly or indirectly with the sport of archery are invited to submit details of themselves and the services or products they can provide, so that we can compile a list and post it on the website for all to see and patronize. Advertisement spaces will also be made available for a fee, of course, and all such fees collected will go towards organizing better archery courses for all archers in Singapore.

Schools’ Listing

As discussed during the coaches’ meeting last Friday, 25 August, 2006, we will need to compile a list of all schools that are currently being coached by a certified archery coach. This list will serve to indicate which Coach is involved with which particular school and this is very important because when the NTS is launched and schools come on board, schools without a listed coach will be farmed out to interested coaches.

So, Coaches, please email the schools that you are involved with to Sonny Nair so that he may compile such a list and post it on the web for all to see. For verification purposes and in fairness to all, I will be writing to all schools named to ascertain correctness of submissions.

We anticipate that 30 or more new schools will be taking up archery and if this exercise is not carried out, there will be lots of friction and bad blood going around. So, please help us to help you prevent all that.

Registration of Archers

Recently, a JC student had his archery bag searched by a MRT staff because there were arrows protruding from the bag. Some of you may have also experienced or heard of other such incidents. That got me thinking. Don’t we need to have some kind of proof that we are archers and not some ‘terrorist’ who is out to shoot someone? Should not we have some form of control over the sales of such ‘weapons’?

Give this matter some thought and send us your views to Sonny Nair. Let your view be heard and be in our minds when the AAS committee meets next to discuss this matter.

Thanks for reading and be good.

George Loh
President
AAS