My Archery History (January 1983 - July 2012)

Archery is a sport that has been surrounding me, more or less, since I can remember. I have probably tried every other sport over the years, but seems I keep coming back to shooting arrows and I feel this time around it's here to stay.

As a small child I used to watch my father shoot his traditional bow in the mid-to-late 80s. He would compete and bring home some medals, making a young son proud for sure. In the early 90s he "upgraded" to a compound bow and that was the first time I had seen one of those.

By the mid 90s I was old enough to actively participate, so I did. I inherited my very first bow - my father's old PSE Spirit.

PSE Spirit - Image courtesy of ... Google (?).

A few years later, someone in our club (this person later became an archery champion in Australia) was replacing his Hoyt Oasis and gave it to me for free, as long as I kept shooting it. So I got myself a "new" bow.

Hoyt Oasis - Image courtesy of ... ArcheryTalk

At the time I'd mostly shoot for fun - club shoots and the odd tournament. In June of 2000 I had the opportunity to shoot at the Mediterranean Championship in Antalya, Turkey, representing Macedonia. I participated, but didn't finish due to equipment failure, and that was a big blow. I kind of quit archery altogether right after.

About a year later (June 2001) my family and I moved to Toronto. I started university and there were more pressing matters to deal with over archery for a few years. The fact that archery is extremely suppressed by almost all other sports in this part of the world didn't help either. But it would still catch my eye - I visited the Hart House Archery Club a few times, would watch archery during the Olympics, watch the occasional YouTube video... In the back of my mind I knew it existed, which is more than most can say.

Meanwhile I graduated, started working, got married. In passing I had mentioned to my wife that I used to be in archery, but never really looked it up after moving to Toronto and that I didn't even think it "existed" outside people's back yards or bow hunting. She thought it's "cool" and wanted to try it some day... and a few days later, she emailed me a list of clubs in the GTA.

She had already planned a day to go visit Archers of Caledon. This was in July of 2012, and my first more serious brush with archery in years.

M.