[Archers] Pennsic

Wed Oct 27 19:06:43 PDT 2010

Greetings to all you great Atlantian Archers. 

 I have tried to stay out of this discussion because I have tired unsuccessfully in the past to define just such a shoot, possible also due to my sometimes caustic personality I have gotten nowhere.  I am completely in sympathy with Nuala's proposal, a lot of really good archers have been dissed by the east in the past. She has also hit the nail directly in the head, outside of the political considerations of being allowed to host such a shoot, how do you limit the numbers. Almost every archer will believe that they should be allowed to compete. Whatever we do you will have archers who feel that they were dissed. 

I am going to suggest that we have a two stage shoot. 

Stage one: no more that 4 targets, we know that peterson mats will take a lot of abuse so use peterson mats and 4 fairly simple targets, allow one day to sign up allow only those who sign up to shoot the next day, take the top 8 to the next round.  and have:

Stage two a one on one shoot off.

Alternatively:  Take the top 30 scores from the first time they shoot the populace shoot. allowing alternates to fill in based on their first populace score. 

Then do our shoot.   

The only down side I see to that is that a lot of archers will want to shoot it for fun and will be shut out. 

The other alternative is to just say the heck with it shoot the things that are fun and say forget the pennsic "champions" shoot and we sponsor a fun Atlantian style populace shoot. Which may be our best choice. 

I am more that willing to help, if I go to pennsic next summer.

Allen

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:16:53 -0700
From: holly0920 at yahoo.com
To: janynfletcher at comcast.net; archers at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org
Subject: Re: [Archers] Pennsic

Dear beloved Archer-Devotees of the list:

A couple of clarifications, if I may.

(1) When I say the "back 40" behind the trailers, I mean way back in the area where there are about 40 trailers, not right behind the archery tents where there are two trailers. Which area did you try to use before, Janyn?

(2) The need to restrict the sheer number of archers is not just an issue of target-life. I am sorry if I left that impression. A novelty populace shoot open to every archer at Pennsic is WAY beyond the scope of what any of us can handle in terms of time and effort. There is already a populace shoot: in place at Pennsic -- it is the war points targets. I am interested in seeing a challenging, difficult shoot for a kingdom/individual championship separate from that.

This may well be the point at which all our discussions fall apart, as Dealla says they have in the past - - we all have a different vision of what this shoot should look like and we all apparently have a different vision of what the very purpose of this shoot is. 

To reiterate: I am interested in working for those Atlantian Archers who are shut out of the championship shoot because the East only takes 7 of us - - when we all know Atlantia has enough fine archers to field a team of 30 ourselves (and win it all.) I want to see an expert-level individual and kingdom championship shoot that is completely outside the realm of the war, of the war points, of the East/Mid monopoly of archery at Pennsic. 

Somehow the numbers have to be imited - - I just threw out royal rounds as a non-political, non-subjective measure. You could say bowmen and above, you could say top 20 who are at Pennsic....whatever. Just make it objective.

When I was an Archer or a Marksman, it was enough to shoot the populace points at Pennsic and a couple of novelty shoots. I had no expectation or need of being on a champions team. But now I see what is really happening: our very, very top archers in Atlantia are not "chosen" for the East's team. It is degrading and demoralizing and leads many fine archers to avoid Pennsic altogether. This is not right!

So I am driven to correct this wrong. I'm really not looking for a way to add to my work load before OR at Pennsic, believe me. 

Nuala of Needwood Forest

From: Janyn Fletcher <janynfletcher at comcast.net>
To: Holly Gibbons <holly0920 at yahoo.com>; archers at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org
Sent: Wed, October 27, 2010 7:10:51 PM
Subject: RE: [Archers] Pennsic

Two things here….

I must have missed the part about beginners, I would say if they are not welcomed we should not even hold this. I typically help around 20-40 beginners every year at Pennsic, and it is one of my loves. It is very rewarding to see them have fun and shoot and also be saved from the “grilling” that the East marshal’s love to impose on them.

Secondly, the area behind the marshal’s tent with the trailers is where I have asked for the last 2 years to have re-arranged to accommodate more room for other things. Was met with great resistance and that was that, hoping the new blood at least gives us a chance!

From: archers-bounces at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org [mailto:archers-bounces at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org] On Behalf Of Holly Gibbons
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 6:46 PM
To: archers at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org
Subject: Re: [Archers] Pennsic

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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