Perhaps no other group was happier to see the rain finally disappear than the Aboriginal Sports Circle of the NWT.
That meant the NWT Archery Championships could go ahead and they did in full order at the Yellowknife Ski Club this past weekend.
Beth Hudson, the Sports Circle's events manager, said approximately 30 had signed up but 20 actually showed up to compete.
“They may have been worried about the weather,” she joked. “We were just lucky that it all worked out and we were able to get everything in.”
Everything did work out, even with the rain on the Friday evening, because the first order of business was held indoors at St. Joe's Gymnasium with the 2019 Canada Winter Games identification camp. Under the watchful eyes of Eugene Roach and Cynthia White, the coaches for Team NT, around a dozen young archers took aim at the targets, which uses traditional archery scoring with 10 points for the bullseye, nine points for the ring just outside the bullseye and descending one point for each ring after that.
“It's great to see such a high level of interest in the higher level of archery,” said Hudson. “It's an official sport for the 2020 Arctic Winter Games in Whitehorse so it's going to be interesting to see how much it will grow in the years to come.”
After that, it was outdoors to the ski club for the 3-D targets and the official championships. A total of 10 targets, which were effigies of animals one would see when out hunting in the NWT such as bison and muskox, were laid out along the course. Each archer went around the circuit twice, making it a total of 20 targets. The archers took part in both traditional (recurve) bow and compound bow disciplines.
The scoring for 3-D archery differs somewhat from target archery in that the bullseye – the heart and lung area of the animal – is worth 11 points. The next ring outside of that is worth 10 points, eight points for the next ring and five points just for hitting the animal. No points were awarded for a miss or if the arrow hit anything sort of phalanges, such as horns or hooves. Whoever had the most points totaled up once the competition came to a close was declared the winner.
“If we had two or more per gender in an age group, we had a competition,” said Hudson.
Several adults were out walking the course to help guide the young archers and Hudson said that piqued some interest.
“Some of them were wanting to take part themselves,” she said with a laugh.
Hudson said everything was a success and the future of the sport looks really bright in the NWT.
“There were parents asking how they could buy equipment for their kids and that's so encouraging,” she said. “Seeing the kids getting right into it is exciting and I'm excited to see them have these kinds of opportunities.”