It’s still 15 months until the 2019 National Archery Championships, but Prince Albert’s local archery club is already gearing up to host the event.
“We’re all getting excited. The planning is really starting to ramp up,” said John Cannon, president of the Timberland BowBenders, the city’s archery club.
The BowBenders will the national championships from Aug. 2 to Aug. 11, 2019 inside and outside of the Alfred Jenkins Field House.
Cannon said he expects at more than 1,000 archers to descend on Prince Albert for the tournament; there’s also a chance the city will host American teams, which was the case when Peterborough, Ont., hosted the event a few years ago, he said.
“(Planning) is just something we need to do – we’ve been purchasing equipment, just trying to get our website running. It’s been very quite up until now.
“We’ve got some great venues in Prince Albert, which we’re going to promote to get archers to stay for the whole time. We’re just starting to get busy.”
The national championships will feature recurve and compound archers.
Recurve archers use a bow and a single bowstring to release their arrows. That means when they aim and pull their bowstring, they’re bearing the full weight of the string-bow combination on their arms.
Compound archers use a bow and bowstring with a cable-pulley system. As the archer readies her/his arrow for aiming, the pulleys reduce the weight of the bow on the archer’s arm. The weight reduction can be as high as 70 or 80 per cent.
Cannon said that the BowBenders will also be hosting this year’s Canada Cup tournament, which will be held from May 19 to 21, also at the Alfred Jenkins Field House.
