Cariboo Archers continued to aim for a berth on Team Canada last week at the 2014 Canadian National Archery Championships in Lac La Biche, Alta.
“Many people were talking about the probability of four archers from one club being selected to Team Canada for the 3D Archery World Championships for 2014,” said Cariboo Archer Al Campsall, who is vying for a spot on the team alongside Jessica Mobbs, Dan Mobbs and Fred Streleoff.
The team selection, however, is currently delayed because Quebec has not yet hosted its provincial championships this year and is not slated until the Aug. 23-24 weekend.
That said, based on their performances at provincials and nationals, all four are favourites to be chosen to Team Canada.
At the 3D Archery Championships last week Jessica sniped a silver medal in the women’s longbow division, Streleoff and Dan picked up gold and silver medals, respectively, in the men’s instinctive recurve division and Campsall won his 12th Canadian championship in the master’s open category.
Later in the week during the field archery and target archery components of the Canadian National Archery Championships Campsall continued his dominance.
On Wednesday, Aug. 6, Campsall also won the field archery event, shattering the Canadian record by 17 points.
“Field archery is shot in the woods including up and down hills,” Campsall said.
“Unlike 3D the true distances are marked in five-metre increments from 10 to 60 metres. The hill shooting requires extrapolation of horizontal distances since gravity acts on the arrows in the vertical plane only. The steeper the incline, the closer you must set your sight pin.”
Following that Campsall completed the clean sweep of the national championships, winning the target championships on Aug. 8-9 shooting a personal best score in the 1440 (36 arrows shot at each of 70, 60, 50 and 30 metres for a total off 144 arrows).
“However, I found myself behind the perennial Canadian champion by seven points,” he said.
On Saturday morning the duo shot a 720 (72 arrows shot at 50 metres).
“I shot very well coming from behind to win by a good margin,” he said.
Later that night Campsall was told by one of the Archery Canada officials that no archer in the history of Archery Canada had ever completed the feat of winning the Canadian 3D, grand prix, field and target archery championships in the same year.
“I was pretty excited about this,” he said.