[Archers] royal rounds

[Stephen Kiefert]

Royal Rounds Rant from Evelynne

    I know I have been a nudge about getting Royal Rounds to happen in the kingdom and every time I make a plea for Royal Rounds I see confusion on the faces around me.  So I want to explain why that is a priority for me.

    As Baroness of course I am all about making the barony look good, and more archers on the kingdom list makes us look good, but it is more than that.  I want our archers to have fun and be challenged to improve.  We have a fair number of archers in Black Diamond and only two archers on the list.  Than in itself is reason to get the Royal Rounds going and show our numbers even if we are all novice or archer level.  It is more than that however, it is a tool for self improvement.

    Once you are on the list you can clearly see your ranking in the whole Kingdom and you can see how much you need to get just one number higher on that list.   Getting from Novice to Archer may be hard and from Archer to Marksman even harder and lord knows I spent three years getting from Marksman to Bowman.  Now my challenge is to get back to Bowman having fallen back to Marksman with lack of practice.  The numbers on the kingdom list make it possible to have smaller goals that are reachable in shorter periods of time.  That works two ways.  If I have an average of say 43 from my current three listed best rounds this year I only need one good round scored by a marshal to get a 44.  Victory is sweet even in small amounts and having made that goal gives me the encouragement to try for 45.  If I am number 89 on the kingdom list with an average of 35 say, I can see on the list that the next person above me is at 35.6.  I only need to get to 36 to rise in the ranks to number 88.  If I wait too long however I may find someone below me has taken my place as 89 and I have to practice to hold my standing.  Either way I have small goals and large goals and I can track my improvement against a large field of archers.  Other folks at my practice is nice but my focus can be on my own development even if no one else shows up.  Just shooting at a hay bale doesn’t let you know if you are getting better.  

    The kingdom archery community has made it as easy as possible by allowing any marshal to score and report even without an official practice.  I am pestering the kingdom archers to at least make Royal Rounds available at events, that has not gone well, but I keep asking and eventually you will hear me. 

    I brought it up again at Unevent target archery and got the same blank looks than mean no Royal Rounds at events will be coming soon.  The top ranked archers are so bored with that.  They just want novelty to shoot at because it is more fun at that level.  I agree novelty shoots are fun.  Maybe they can do royal rounds locally but that is not true for many archers.  Something is not working well.  There are only 61 current royal round scores in a kingdom of over 2000.  They did however hear me out and the group suggested we try to get gun clubs to let us shoot at their ranges.  They often have over a hundred yards to work with, I am told, and sometimes that will be indoors for winter practice.  I have asked my populace to scout that out so I thank you all for that suggestion.  Would it be so hard to run a Royal Round off to the side once or twice in a full day of archery at events?  It doesn’t have to occupy anyone all day.  I’ll keep working at it on the home front.

    The Kingdom list really worked for me and I want to spread the love of archery.  Thanks for listening.

Evelynne Merrymet
Baroness of Black Diamond 
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