[Archers] royal rounds

Thu Dec 7 09:05:47 PST 2017

 Well said Baroness and Cam Cam Cam Cammy Cam. ( :-) ) . My two ducats input.......
When I lived in NC I lived on 4 1/2 acres and hosted archery practice every Sunday weather permitting. At one point there were 12 archers and about 7 other folks just hanging out. Archery in Sacred Stone was the prime entrance point for new folks. Like many here, I grew bored of shooting RRs but I continued. At each practice I would ask those who attended if they wanted to shoot RRs after a warm up time. Often they did. I think most felt as I did, RRs were a way to compare how I was shooting with other Atlantian archers I seldom was able to shoot with due to distance. But RRs also allow us archers to compare our archery skills with archers throughout the Known World. And I think that is kinda fun.
Now I live in Meridies and in a "normal" neighborhood. Thus shooting in my yard becomes problematic as my neighbors have a dim view of overshoots flying through their yards. Thus I have joined a rod and gun club that has an archery range. Being who I am, I invited my fellow shire archers to come out to archery practices with me. We typically do some general warm up practice shooting then shoot an RR or 3 depending upon interest from those in attendance. As such, members of my shire are now showing up on the Meridian RR database. The real beauty of this for me is that my fellow shire mates are getting very excited about their scores and moving up on the list. They are also being called up in royal courts to receive their appropriate colored tassel for their current ranking (Meridies uses tassels instead of medallions for rankings). 
I also relate to the point made by the Baroness about comparing ourself with others. I have a personal goal of having the position of 1 and 2 in the Meridian RR db. 1 for longbow, 2 for recurve (currently I'm 2 longbow and 4 recurve). I know the archer who is in first place and like him as he is a great person. This competition is all in fun and, I believe, represents what RR scores are really all about.
Cam made the point of shooting with different bow types. Grimm set a goal for himself of getting the GBE with several bow types. He made his goal. Congrats to Grimm. For those of us who are mildly bored with RRs setting goals like this adds spice to the shooting.
Having said all this, there is a fact of this aspect of the SCA archery. None of us will ever get very good is all we shoot is RRs. I have purposely shot at unknown distances and from unusual positions, standing on a log round, kneeling, or around objects for the purpose of forcing myself to improve in these unusual conditions. My personal experience has been that after shooting these unusual conditions when I go back to shooting RRs my scores improve. Thus there is room for both, novelty shoots and RRs at events.
However, how the range is set and preparedness of the marshal running archery at an event is entirely dependent upon the marshal. Some MIC events with many targets which can be quickly and easily replaced, plan prize shoots, provide for novelty shoots and RRs, i.e. score sheets, timers, etc. When I was in Sacred Stone MICing archery at many events attended by many non Sacred Stone archers it was made known to me that many groups simply do not have the facilities to conduct RRs. For this reason I personally believe events should be able to provide the shooting of RRs. Times can be announced so that RRs do not consume the entire day of shooting for those bored with RRs. It can be worked out but requires planing and thinking ahead.
So my inputs to this issue.
Baron CoGNow a Meridian but former Atlantia
    On Thursday, December 7, 2017, 9:50:00 AM EST, Cameron deGrey <camerondegrey at gmail.com> wrote:  

 Was about to respond and wrote a post..

Thanks for the inspiration Excellency Evelynne Merrymet

http://periodpersonas.com/village/2017/12/get-those-archery-scores-in-royal-rounds-ikac-and-ikcac/

On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 8:39 AM, Jonathas <Jonathas at redfoxden.org> wrote:

I agree that Royal Rounds are important.  At least once a month when we are outdoors I dedicate our Archery Practice to Royal Rounds and we shoot several.  I would encourage the same at as Royal Rounds are a great benchmark for how your archers are currently shooting and show their improvement over time.
Jonathas
On Dec 7, 2017 8:27 AM, "JAY NARDONE" <jaynardone at comcast.net> wrote:

 Baroness, I completely agree with you and when I was DEM I encouraged those MIC's who ran events to try to also hold a few rounds of Royal Rounds. It is not always possible with the room given to archery at events but I think it is a great place to offer them because of the amount of new comers we get at events vise practices. The problem I have seen in the past it takes that many more marshals to run in addition to the event, not saying it cant be done it just requires some additional planning.

While it is true that many of us who have reached GBE are not interested in RR any longer, there are many who still are and we should do our part to support them.

In Service,

Janyn

On December 7, 2017 at 1:21 AM Stephen Kiefert <lanhamlaw at att.net> wrote:

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 

______________________________ _________________
Archers mailing list
Archers at seahorse.atlantia.sca. org
http://seahorse.atlantia.sca.o rg/listinfo.cgi/archers-atlant ia.sca.org

______________________________ _________________
Archers mailing list
Archers at seahorse.atlantia.sca. org
http://seahorse.atlantia.sca. org/listinfo.cgi/archers- atlantia.sca.org

_______________________________________________
Archers mailing list
Archers at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org
http://seahorse.atlantia.sca.org/listinfo.cgi/archers-atlantia.sca.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seahorse.atlantia.sca.org/pipermail/archers-atlantia.sca.org/attachments/20171207/438180a7/attachment-0001.html>