[Ansteorra-archery] Third Quarter 2008 Royal Round Keeper Report

[Eadric Anstapa]

Wendel Bordelon wrote:
> I know that the seneca run does take time.  I had the pleasure to
> visit and watch from the side lines.  But for the most part it is not a spectator event. I enjoyed visiting the people waiting in line for their turn to do the run.
> What I am curious about is what prevented shooting a RR?  It might have been something for the people not doing the seneca run to do while they waited. You say that you were equipped to run a RR but it didn't happen.  Was it a lack of marshals?
>
> Just curious,
> --Francois
>   

Well not really a lack of marshals  but the Seneca Run certainly takes a 
lot out of the marshals.  Think about it, if there was 24 competitors 
running through that several hundred yard course that means 24 times 
there was a marshals running along with them.  Add that on top of 
however many times spent walking back and forth to a 100 yd clout and 
setting up and tearing down such a large range area and the marshals are 
beat at the end of the day.  It takes the Knights Marshal a small 
fraction of the time to setup his list field as it does the archery 
range because we aren't just plunking down target butts at 20/30/40 yards.

The real reason is the way the Gates Edge event itself is run, not the 
archery portion but the whole event.  To win the over-all event 
championship a person has to participate in X number of the individual 
championships.  Since the Rapier tournament is during a finite time in 
the AM, and the Armored tournament during a finite time in the PM, 
things like Archery and Thrown weapons kinda have to be open all day so 
that people can come down and participate as they get free from the 
other competitions and then go back to other competitions.  To allow 
people to come and go that means that once a target gets setup for the  
championship tournament it has to stay setup right there in that spot so 
that we can squeeze them in, in any order, and the tournament stays the 
same for all shooters.

If we wanted 5 color FITA targets to be part of our championship shoot 
then we certainly could do that and have Royal Rounds easily but we 
don't want that.  We want something  we feel is more challenging, 
something more appealing to us that better reflects the skills we want 
our archery champion to have, and less mundane.

Setting up a range for Royal Rounds to remain static all day could have 
been done but would have required more room on our part, setting up the 
Seneca Run different and meant that many more of the shooting stations 
for the Seneca Run would have been hidden from spectators and of course 
would have been more work for the marshals.

So, what prevented it?  Absolutely nothing other than the choices we made.

But we are already looking at other choices that we can make for next 
year that might allow more shooting, perhaps Royal Rounds, for those so 
inclined without have to do away with the Clout and Seneca Run.  However 
quite honestly if it comes down to Royal Rounds or no Royal Rounds then 
there are likely to be none since that is something that any branch 
should be able to accomplish at their practices and for our single 
calendar event our shire is allowed a year we want something a little more.

I think a better question is what prevents more branches from submitting 
Royal Rounds at all.  Right now in all of Ansteorra there are really 
only 5 branches submitting scores regularly.  Three in the North, one in 
Central, and one in Coastal.

Regards,

-EA