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The Southland Archery Club is celebrating recent success at a national tournament and vice-president Marina McLeod hopes it will bring more members.
“We’re trying to build up the membership again because it’s sort of petered out a bit, a lot of young ones have moved on to university,” she said.
She was introduced to archery through her son and three years ago, decided to pick up a bow herself.
“My son was watching Arrow and some of our other members were into games . . . when you start seeing them on TV, you think ‘oh what is that sport?’, hopefully they think they can try it.”
“It’s a wide range group of ages as well, it’s not just young kids coming through.”
“I wish I’d picked it up earlier, because it’s such a fun sport.”
Club secretary Gillian Kennedy highlighted how old members have started bringing in their children and grandchildren, calling it a “big family”.
She specifically mentioned 10-year-old Levi Harrison who found success at a recent tournament, coached by his grandfather Kirk Lawry.
“It’s great to see the young ones come up and it’s great to see Kirk come back and bring his grandson. He was a really good shooter and he’s come back to the club.”
Ms Kennedy’s own daughter Tegan Kennedy started archery six years ago and after competing in the Archery New Zealand Indoor National Championships, walked away with silver and bronze medals.
Competing in the under 21 female compound bow category, she said she was “pretty happy” with the results, winning bronze in matchplay and silver overall.
She picked up archery at school on a trip to Adventure Southland and from there it became her sport of choice.
Ms Kennedy said although Tegan was a shy person, archery had helped her come out of her shell.
“It’s good for their confidence, it gets them out to meet people of different age groups, completely different from rugby, netball or footy.”
Paul Riley has been competing in archery for almost 20 years. As a naturally logical person, he said he enjoyed it being “silent and analogue”.
He said learning the form was only about half of it, “the other half is the mental process”.
He said there was a lot of repetition involved in archery, repeating the process “no matter the conditions, weather, or pressure”.
Winning gold in the recurve barebow men 50+ category, he walked away feeling satisfied after a few years of work.
“I’ve been going for the New Zealand title for quite a few years … I got third two years ago and last year I was fourth, so nice to be back on the podium again.”
He said it was a close call, winning the medal by a 5mm margin.
“It came down to a one arrow shoot off, closest to the middle got the whole lot . . . there’s quite a lot of people watching, but that was all phased out.”
Sian Cooper has only been shooting with the club for just over a year, but also performed well at the tournament, achieving a personal best.
He was drawn to archery as a way to be sociable and spend time with “like minded people”.
“It’s fun, we’ve got a good club down here.”
Ms McLeod said archers in Southland often have less opportunities than those up north, because Southlanders had to travel further to compete.
“We usually support Tegan pretty well in Christchurch.”
She said last year they had 16 members head to masters, saying it was “great fun”.
tayler.mutton@alliedmedia.co.nz