[Archers] Known World stuff

[Holly Gibbons]

Greetings, Atlantian Archers.
I have not been on the archery lists much this past year,
but this one really caught my eye.
1.       First off, I think we need to remember our history
as we go forward in the planning for a known world championship. The discussions
on this whole topic really got going a long time ago, on the archers’ list, in
the fall of 2010. I recall that it was Fen and I that first wrote and were soon
joined by all the others of you who were unhappy with the archery experience at
Pennsic. The motivation for running a shoot parallel but different from the “champions’
team” was plain and simple unhappiness with the status quo. Every year at
Pennsic archers from all over the known world gathered and wanted to play their
game and compete against each other, compete against archers from all across
the kingdoms. We watched as the Thrown Weapons folks had a ton of fun running
their championships and we wondered, why can’t archers have the same fun? Yet,
year after year, the Mid and East controlled everything and severely limited
the number of Atlantians that could shoot the champions team war point. Most
really good Atlantian archers were left shooting only the populace targets day
after day. Not much fun and not happy. There was just horrendous bad karma surrounding
the whole champions shoot. So bad that it was totally turning off many of
Atlantia’s best archers from participating at all - - some didn’t even take
their bows to Pennsic! So in the fall/winter of 2010, since we had no control
over the official Pennsic stuff, we all decided to put on our own shoot. At
that time, I was one of the ones in favor of making this “extra shoot” a Known
World Archery Championship. It made sense to me that since we were all at
Pennsic and since many archers already traveled for long distances to be there,
that it was our best shot for a real known world competition. But in the
discussions on the list, most Atlantians wanted a non-exclusive, relatively
non-competitive, shoot.  There was just a
strong sense of “enough with the competition already.”  So that’s what we did, we decided to hold an
open, fun, not particularly competitive shoot (although there were scorecards
and prizes), and we called it St. Sebastian’s Shoot (thanks, Siegfried!) and purposefully
left out any wording about championship or known world. The ulterior motives
were to (a) show the known world what kind of wonderful novelty shoot Atlantia
could put on (b) contribute to Pennsic archery in a positive way (c)
demonstrate that it is possible to run 150 or more people through a novelty
shoot in one day, as a way to try to convince the powers-that-be to open up the
“champions’ team” to a larger size so more Atlantians could shoot, and (d)to
have fun putting on a shoot together.  So
for two Pennsics we have put on St. Sebastian’s Shoot, with great success as
measured by the smiles, the children, the amazing targets, the “thank-you” comments,
and the sense of happiness and camaraderie on the archery range. I have been
really proud to be an Atlantian Archer, as I’m sure many of you have been, too.
All the other stuff has somehow become moot. I felt no compunction to do any
other shooting, nor any bad karma during my vacation. 
2.       Which leads me to the present discussions. After
strongly opposing any mention of “known world” or “championship” for our big
Pennsic shoot, which lead to the St. Sebastian’s Shoot and its focus on
inclusiveness, suddenly there was a new push in 2011 for just that very thing,
an ultra-competitve known world archery championship! So we then decided on the
archers’ list that it is a big world and there should be room for everything. I
think it was said there should be room for St. Sebastian’s on the range and for
cog’s dog-and-pony show at the castle, too - - the more archery the merrier! And
that’s pretty much where things were left off. After some discussion of a
symposium, a stand-alone archery event, it dwindled. I do think it is most
sensible to attach any “known world” event to Pennsic, just the most logical
choice.
3.       That said, the present talk right now is of a
known world championship consisting of another novelty, multi-target shoot with
archers keeping their own score and then a shootout at the end. I am afraid we are
reinventing the wheel here. But much more troubling to me, as someone who has
worked hard on the two St. Sebastian’s Shoots, is the revelation in the new
posting that somehow, unilaterally, St. Sebastian’s Shoot has gotten scrapped
by the authorities. The East has been informed that we do not want to hold St.
Sebastian’s next year? Was there a consensus on this? Whose decision is this to
make? Janyn? I disagree that the “original” intent was to hand off the shoot to
other kingdoms. That was never in my understanding of it. Yes, it is great if
other kingdoms wanted to do that, but there was also quite a bit of, this is
Atlantia’s baby and we like it that way.
4.       As a public spectacle, cog’s dog-and-pony show ,
I absolutely love- adore! - the idea of a shootout in front of the castle. But
I have seen the jockeying and cheating that goes on and I would say, do not
have a pre-shootout qualifier multi-target shoot-at-your-own-pace event to pick
teams.  Have any of you watched the way
they do things at Thrown Weapons? Four competitors in front of four targets.
Two throws and you rotate. Repeat. When those four are done, bring on the next
four. Marshals score the hits. It is very efficient, very public, very fun. If
you really have a crowd of archers to run through in a very small amount of
time, it could be even more efficient if you only got two or three arrows,
period. You could have four archers at a time shooting at each of four
identical targets. Up and out. (Seen Brave?) Then take the top scorers and have
your shootout. All public, all with a crowd. And we absolutely could pull this
off in 2013. It’s just not that complicated – that is the beauty of it. Getting
on the battlefield schedule is the hardest part.
5.       This idea that you can call for targets from
each kingdom is one that has been bandied about endlessly. But as every MIC who
has tried it knows, it does not work. How many times have “target competitions”
been announced -- you know, bring your best target and we will let the populace
vote on their favorite -- only to have no targets show up? I won one of those
once because mine was the only target. Someone from the East actually said, at
Pennsic, that the East would do like to that next year for a novelty shoot at
Pennsic.  She actually said,”we have a
great idea, everybody else will bring the targets and the people will vote and
we will give prizes but not have to do the work !” It told her we call it the
lazy MIC shoot. Good luck with that. And even if you can get targets from every
corner of the earth, who is to put a cohesive shoot together out of all the
orphan targets?
6.       Anyway, I am writing for several reasons. One, I
hate to see Atlantia walk away from St. Sebastian’s Shoot, especially without
some kind of public forum on that choice. Two, I like the public shootout as a
separate stand-alone Pennsic event. Three, I just want to remind everyone of
all that has led up to this point in time.
 
Nuala 
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Original Message:
Good evening everyone, now that we are back from Pennsic and hopefully 
well
rested I wanted to take a minute to discuss something with you. Around 
this time
last year THL Christophe and I started a discussion about trying to 
hold the
first known world archery championship. Our thoughts were that 
Pennsic would be
the most opportune place because we could capitalize on all 
of the archers there
from the known world. I wanted to start this discussion 
now because I firmly
believe that if we start now we will not be ready for 
Pennsic next year but we
could target 2014. Also there is no way myself or 
even a few of us could pull
this off alone. If COG is willing I would throw 
my hat and hopefully his into
the ring to lead this event. With that said, we 
would need a lead also for each
kingdom for archery related items, an 
autocrat like lead to help with
communications and inter-kingdom discussions 
and I'm thinking an exchequer like
lead because I'm thinking we would want to 
charge a small fee if we want to get
some very nice prizes. If not we could 
drop this last position. In addition we
would need volunteers again to help 
marshal and make some targets.

Unlike St. Sebastian's, I was thinking 
that each of the participating kingdoms
could make 2 or 3 targets to enter 
into the competition. This part is still
fuzzy but I was thinking that we 
could hold basically eliminations by the way of
an all day shoot like St. 
Sebastian's to pair the teams down to a final 4. The
whole point of this 
would then be to have a shoot off of those final 4 teams in
front of the 
populous on the battle field (yes I know scheduling will suck, that
is why we 
would do this 2 years out), to a final champion team of the known
world. Team 
sizes would be 18 -24 and this would be a total points competition.
This part 
is also fuzzy still but I was thinking that we could make it
interesting by 
making each of the team positions cover GBE, BE, BOWMAN,
MARKSMAN, 
etc…

I have been mentioning this to Lord Godric of the East and this year 
while at
the range at Pennsic, I overheard him talking with his deputy about 
trying to
start communications about this event. I would love for Atlantia to 
pull this
off but I need to know how you all feel and if you're up to 
something of this
level? I don't believe for a minute that the East will pull 
this together for
next year since they can't seem to even run the St. 
Sebastian's as it should be,
but I would hate to lose this shoot to someone 
else because we didn't act.

So, that is that. I just wanted to start the 
discussion again over the fall and
winter months to see where our excitement 
level is? If we decide to proceed I
will get word to Godric and we would need 
to form the core team quickly. That
way we could start to get the word out to 
the other Kingdoms and try to get the
logistics in place to lay the 
foundation. I told the East that we did not want
to run St. Sebastian's next 
year because we wanted to move up to this event. In
all honesty the intent of 
St. Sebastian's was that Atlantia would run it the
first year and hand it off 
to the mid or east to run it next and then rotate
through so no Kingdom had 
to repeatedly run it. I took it back this year because
there was little 
interest from the east or others to run it at the level we are
used too. I 
will still probe the East later this year to find out what is
happening with 
the novelty shoot for Pennsic next year. We can worry about 
that
later….

In Service,

Janyn
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seahorse.atlantia.sca.org/pipermail/archers-atlantia.sca.org/attachments/20120907/577f6c23/attachment-0002.htm>