[Archers] Pennsic

[Holly Gibbons]

Dear Comrades-in-Bows:

Wow! SO many good ideas. Thank you Rowan for your boosterism, thank you Mika for 
your endless and extremely helpful wisdom, thank you Janyn and Bright Hills, for 
always being ready to work, thank you all archers for taking this on, thank you 
Lorelei, Fearless Leader.

I agree with Mika on the back 40. It was only a vain hope to get the whole 
range. There's plenty of room back around the trailers to have 10 or 12 stations 
if they'll let us. As to targets, we don't usually use butts except for warmups 
and folks can do that on the regular range. My standing targets are all foam and 
cardboard and strap to rebar. Because of this I would have to say that I don't 
think you can have every archer at Pennsic shoot this thing - - how many of us 
are there? The targets might not last 1000 shots each. You can also have a 
limited # of shots to preserve targets. Like Reynard's shoots with one arrow per 
target. If you shoot 8 arrows per archer and there are 100 archers, you 
definitely have a target-falling-apart problem. I adore Luce's ground snakes, 
but 800 shots?

So while I agree that elitism is not what we want here, I would vote that the 
shoot be restricted to bowmen and above. The targets are going to be difficult, 
arrows will be lost, and we will have lots of archers to get through the shoot. 
I am not really interested in running a gigantic event for everyone, as fun as 
that would be: I am interested in having an expert-level kingdom/individual 
known world championship that is completely ouside the Pennsic war stuff.

As to individuals, kingdoms, averages, etc. Listen, if we let Mika's score be 
the average for his Kingdom, this competition is already over! So I think you 
all shoot for an individual score and then you can sum the best 10 scores (or 
pick 5 or another number) for each kingdom for the kingdom competition. So Mika, 
you might have to drag out some more westerners to shoot with you! And BTW, the 
day we pick has to be a day that does NOT have combat archery going on   :)
  
(One last thought on the back 40  - - you would probably have to shut down the 
"youth" (I know it's not called that anymore, but you know what I mean) range to 
fully utilize the back field behind it. Just a caution. You'd need that space 
and I don't think there's 100 yards but my memory for the space isn't great.)

If those of you out there can get the politics under control, I volunteer to run 
the advertising and be the shoot/target coordinator. I know we can count on lots 
of good targets from Atlantian archers. I agree with Lorelei about this being a 
lot of work, but many hands make light work, that's why Jonathas' idea of 
everyone just bringing and being responsible for one target is so brilliant. I 
don't think we need two days. Set up in the am, shoot, take down. Again, we will 
not be able to handle an unlimited number of archers without giving up too much 
of our Pennsic time.

{An aside: It's sad that all that effort making targets and setting up a big 
shoot already goes into the champs competition and then we cannot use it for 
this shoot - - but the politics are unsurmountable, I guess. But really, the 
very nicest thing for the Mid/East Pandas to do would be to let "Atlantia and 
other Kingdoms" have a third champs team of their own - - something we have 
heard here has been tried unsuccessfully before. Last summer only 7 Atlantians 
got to shoot while 28 Easters did. Therein the rub. Do those guys have any idea 
how much deep, profound unhappiness this policy causes for Atlantian Archers, 
all of us? I find it so hard to believe that they really want all this bad karma 
swirling around the champs shoot every year when a solution is right beofre 
them. If we had our own team, with 35 archers on it, as each the Mid and East 
do, there would be more than enough happy, happy Atlantian archers!}
   
I'm getting all worked up. Time to go shoot. ps: See you at Holiday Faire, 
Lorelei!

Nuala of Needwood Forest
Geoffrey of Needwood Forest


      
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