[Archers] Pennsic

[Holly Gibbons]

Dear Archer-Comrade Napier:

I almost fainted at your posting. Please allow me to defend myself in this court 
of opinion. I have no grudge against anyone, let alone the hard-working MIC's at 
Pennsic. Perhaps you do not realize that I have shot with the champions team for 
the last two years. 


I must reiterate again that what I am working for is a kingdom/individual 
championship shoot that is outside the war and the war points. I am completely 
inspired by the thrown weapons range at Pennsic. We come together but once a 
year like this: with two weeks and hundreds of acres at our disposal, it seems 
we could have a war PLUS have a known world archery championship as well. 


Anyone who has actually designed and run one of those "famous legendary 
Atlantain populace all-day archery shoots" can tell you that it is a full-time 
job for months in advance and takes at least three days to run. We, all of us 
together, cannot do this at Pennsic.

I have given brief thought to the numbers. If you have 8 stations, teams of 
four, and it takes a team 1.5 hours to shoot, and you want the shooting to take 
no more than 4 hours so you can setup/takedown in one day, you cannot manage 
more than 70 or so archers, tops. There is just no feasible means of holding an 
open populace shoot at Pennsic, in addition to the one already in place.

My vision would be to have a novelty shoot as an adjunct to all the other 
goings-on at the range, a shoot that would have 6 to 8 really challenging 
targets, very difficult stuff, to allow Atlantia's finest to show their stuff 
and have fun at Pennsic, since by convention and tradition, for whatever 
probably very valid reasons, so many are not in on the war champs team.

It is really very simple, at heart. Please do not imply that I hold grudges, or 
wish to work at cross-purposes to the Pennsic war and the Archery War Point. I 
only hope to enrich the range and its offerings, to the happiness and delight of 
Atlantia's finest archers. I cannot bear to sit at Pennsic missing 
my archery-partners-in-crime who won't spend their vacations there because they 
cannot enjoy their favorite game!

Please believe me that I hold no prejudice or judgement against beginning 
archers: I was recently one myself. But then, at that time, I personally found 
more than enough challenge on the populace range with the war points targets and 
with the odd novelty shoot for variety. 


Nuala of Needwood Forest


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Original Message: 2
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2010 07:19:23 -0400
From: "Garth G. Groff" <ggg9y at virginia.edu>
To: Archers at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org
Subject: Re: [Archers] Pennsic
Message-ID: <4CC95C3B.3070504 at virginia.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"

M'lady Nuala,

I can appreciate that you want a chance for our best archers to compete 
against the best from other kingdoms. With respect, do we just want to 
host a shoot for a small group of elite archers who have been snubbed by 
the system? This sounds like a grudge match, which is o.k. in its place, 
but benefits only a small group of people.

Rather, I would like to see Atlantia offer a great shoot (even if it is 
modest in scope) to everybody to share the fun we have with as many 
people as possible, and with minimal elitism. A really well-crafted 
populace shoot would be a wonderful gift from Atlantia to all the 
archers at Pennsic. It could really show the other kingdoms what sort of 
archery program we run, and what sort of great people our archers are. 
To my mind, that's a far better shoot than a grudge match.

I can appreciate that a general novelty shoot could be bigger than you, 
or even a group, can realistically do at Pennsic. That's why I suggest a 
modest size (like 8-10 really well crafted targets), which would allow 
more archers to run through the course in a day.

Before we go any further with this proposal, it would be wise if we all 
agreed on what sort of tournament we want to present, and what we expect 
to get from it.
Kind regards, and with great respect,
Lord Mungo Napier, Shire of Isenfir TA Marshal


      
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