Over the past few months, Awards Group has undertaken a review of Archery GB's official awards and schemes to update the requirements needed to earn and fulfil them.
Members were invited to support staff with their research, looking particularly at score attainment levels and discrepancies, application forms and information booklets, and the overall effectiveness of the awards.
Last year, the following awards and schemes were reviewed: Rose Awards, Progress Awards, Postal competitions (Summer Metrics, November and January Challenges), Junior Award Scheme (JAWS), and Arrow Awards.
We're now happy to report details of the review below, and will be making the following five priorities:
Arrow Awards offered junior archers the chance to gain three badges at different ages throughout their archery career. Badges were available for U12s, U14s and U16s. Scores were obtained at open competitions and archers had to shoot at least one metric/WA round.
JAWS was run annually for all archers up to the age of 18, regardless of bow type or discipline. JAWS points were awarded for various achievements and recorded in the JAWS booklet. This was then submitted at the end of the year, and the entries ranked by the total points.
After careful consideration, the decision has been taken to remove both Arrow and JAWS awards. We would like to thank Helen Woodcock for the immense work she did in processing the JAWS in recent years.
This target archery scheme offers a progression for both junior and senior archers using compound, recurve and longbows with five badges available. The scores required must be gained at a UK record status event. The review's findings have shown there aren't any scores for barebow. Mark Robert and Jack Atkinson have worked together alongside research from Bob Beany and additional comments from Lizzy Rees and have worked out the following scores for barebow. We would like to thank Jack and Mark for their hard work with this project a lot of technical knowledge and research has been used to finalise the scores.
| White | Black | Blue | Red | Gold | Purple | |
| Score | 500 | 600 | 700 | 800 | 900 | 1000 |
Progress awards offer beginner and junior awards for development for both indoors and outdoors. The scores required can be gained at clubs, and archers are not required to attend competitions. They are also available to non-Archery GB clubs such as Schools, Scouts and Guides.
The awards group will look to:
We will then look to re-design the medals and how they are sold to maximise opportunities for non-clubs to use them to support archery development.
These are for all individual archers. The Summer Metrics and November Challenge are open to all athletes in U10 - U18 age groups and various bow types. The January Challenge is shot indoors on a Portsmouth round for adults (juniors can enter) and offers categories of novice, experienced and long-standing members.
The review group will look to:
The decision has been taken to remove the following wording from the clout 6/3 gold end award information. Â"WA/Archery GB Metric Clout”. These awards have been taken out due to the size of the gold not being comparable. A 6/3 gold end has been shown to be easier to gain in a WA round than the imperial rounds due to gold being larger. (18 inches radius compared with 1.5 metres radius) The Tassel Award Scheme, run by Northern Counties Archery Society, already offer a 6/3 Clout End award for the WA/Archery GB Metric Clout.
