President's Address

Greetings fellow Archers,

• 2nd Asia Archery Grand Prix, Taiwan
• Archery for All
• Inter-School Archery competition
• Zhenghua National Archery Range
• Annual General Meeting 2007
• NUS Indoor Shoot

Singapore was well represented at this event which was held in Taipei from 14 to 20 June 2007. The team did very well and in fact had their best outing ever.

Toast of the day goes to Leow Ting Hao who emerged as the Compound King when he defeated the hot favourite from Taiwan who was ranked number 1. It was a very exciting match and closely fought between the two. Well done, Ting Hao.

The other prizes came from the ladies Compound Team (silver), the Junior Men Recurve Team (bronze), the Junior Women Recurve (bronze), and the Men Compound Team (bronze).

There you have it, 1 Gold, 1silver and 3 bronzes. All achieved in a field of competitors that come from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and more.

One of the areas that I have neglected to develop in the past has been in the promotion of archery for the disabled. I understand that there are quite a few of them and they have been training on their own for a while now.

It seems that SDSC has good plans for them and together we can make archery more interesting and challenging for all the disabled archers. There are trials to be held (understand that there is one coming up on 07 July) and local as well as overseas competitions to go to. Please see attached.

One of the hurdles for many coaches is that they are quite ignorant about how to handle the disable archers. To overcome this, we, in association with SDSC, will be organizing a Coach Briefing for all interested coaches who want to work with the disabled archers. I understand SDSC has plans to recruit more coaches to help out in this area on a long term basis and an attendance at this briefing is compulsory. So, coaches, please keep a lookout for more details on this.

Attached: SDSC Invitation for Trials to Participate in Overseas Competitions

This is going to be very exciting. Finally, a full scale inter-school archery competition specially organized for the schools at all levels.

The event will take place over the period 09 August 2007 (yup, it is National Day), 10 August and 11 August 2007. It is being help during Pesta Sukan Month and we want to see it as a regular event on the AAS Calendar. So, come on out in force you young archers.

Coaches who are presently engaged with coaching the school bodies please ensure that you prepare your archers in advance and get them ready for the big event. Also, do ensure that you register them early as places will be limited to the first few hundred archers that the Zhenghua National Archery Range can accommodate.

Archers who are shooting on their own but who would like to take part in the event must also submit their entry early. Don’t forget to inform your school about it and if they need a letter from AAS please write and let me know. The important thing is to take part.

Briefly, I believe the details are:

I strongly recommend that coaches submit an indicative list of the number of archers they are sending by standards (example Primary 1, 2, etc., all the way to Junior College). This will be like your pre booking of slots. It will only be an indicative number for the organizers to work on. A concurrent event is also planned for the Polytechnics and University students.

The event will be extensively covered by the media and we want you in on it. Don’t be left out Coaches and archers because I am very certain that your student archers and their school officials will want to be part of this event. A souvenir program highlighting the event and the sponsors, etc. is being planned and will be circulated amongst the VIP’s schools, sponsors and participants.

So, make it a date archers for there are lots of prizes to be won and victories to be savored.

The Range is fairly complete and we sincerely hope more archers and clubs will make use of the facilities available. The range does not belong to any one single club ( ignore the rumours) but is in fact there for all to use.

To better manage the facilities, AAS will be forming an independent Range Committee to help ensure that the Range stays viable and fully utilized. If you are interested to be a representative on this committee please let me know and I will forward your name to the RC.

All too soon, it has been a year since we took over office. Have we made a difference? I believe we have made a huge difference and I say so unreservedly. Have we done all we can for the archery community? No way, there is much more to be done. Do we need help to better the archers’ lot? You know we do. So, volunteer and help us to help you make archery the preferred sport of Singaporeans.

The AGM info was sent out earlier by emails to all clubs, Basically:

Any issues or concerns or praises (yes, we accept and need these also) please let us know and let us know how we can serve you guys better. It is a very time consuming and tough job to do but we are doing our darnest to make that difference.

Again, I would like to invite volunteers to help take up the cudgel to improve archery in Singapore. You can make the difference.

I would like to end off by congratulating the organizers for an excellent tournament, which I am sure many enjoyed. For the slight hiccups, heck, we are all humans and when we are doing the organizing we will also falter a little. So, give and take and just enjoy the sport. Oh yes, to the many winners, well done. To the losers, “lose lose lah, hor, so what, next time no more play, play or give chance, right?”

You have a good time shooting folks.

George Loh
President
AAS