Junior Archery

As a parent with an athlete participating in a junior-archery program, you're (hopefully!) excited, enthusiastic, and ready to support your shooter. One of the best things you can do for your young star involves picking a coach you can trust . . . and indeed trusting that coach!

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• Top shooters will tell you, former young stars will tell you, and I'll tell you: parents should not coach their children. (I'm speaking generally here; yes, exceptions to the rule exist.) This advice holds for significant others, too: don't coach your "better half."

• Find a coach you can trust. Everyone has different criteria. Some people may want a U.S.A. Archery certified coach. Others may prefer a top competitor, regardless of their coaching credentials.  The critical thing is knowing you and your athlete are in good hands.

• Let the coach you choose do their job. If you're an archery pro, you know the drill . . . and the importance of trusting that coach. If you don't shoot, you can't understand what it's like to be in "the arena." Even if you've competed in other sports, every discipline is different. Let your athlete and the coach you've chosen do the work to make your athlete the best they can be.

 

As Teddy Roosevelt said:

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It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

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