Why bother keeping score?
This article was written for 2020 Archery.
When people first join the 2020 club, I usually give them the following recommendations:
- Don’t worry about your score.
- Keep score every couple of months.
Let me explain.
When to start scoring
When you first walk onto the range having just finished a course, whether that’s a 5-week course or the intensive weekend version, there’s a lot to remember—and a fair bit extra to learn. Suddenly, all of those excellent gold shots you made on the last day of the course disappear and your arrows are wending their way three targets to the left because you can’t remember which way to move your sight or what the hell we were talking about when we explained string pictures.
Which is why I say: don’t worry about your score, especially for the first few sessions. Focus on remembering your stance and set-up and sequencing—that’s the order of steps that you take from planting your feet on the line to releasing your arrow. Focus on getting 3 arrows in more or less the same place on the correct target, and then on moving that group towards the gold.
Eventually, though, your arrows should all be hitting the target relatively consistently. It’s at this point you might consider scoring.
Read the rest on 2020archery.co.uk, or find out more about the club here!