[Ansteorra-missile] Separating Combat from Static Archery

[CinaedOHosey at aol.com]

 Last week Mike vented at a few people on this list over what at the time looked to most observers to be a minor statement by Jacques the Spink. I sat back until the waters calmed a bit to step in to this discussion. Now is the time to say what I saw.
 Jacques the Spink is the local Archery Marshal in Mike's area and as such, he is responsible for both static archery and combat archery. Jacques does great with the static archery community. He is always at their practices teaching and helping. Unfortunately, he has never, to my knowledge gotten in to armor at a fighter practice and shot at fighters or taught others to do so. One can only assume he does not have time to learn to properly use the longbow in combat archery because he devotes so much of his time to the static archery community. That is fine, that is his choice but as the Archery Marshal, he is the person in the area responsible for developing the new combat archers in his area. When the person responsible for training new combat archers can't do it himself and voices the opinion that it is too hard for himself or others to learn we have a problem in the combat archery community.
 The problem, as I see it, is we have one person responsible for two different, and at times conflicting, activities. For example at Three Kings when HE Octavia wanted to discuss combat archery, most of the archers were doing a static shoot. In Mike's area if someone asks about combat archery he is sent to Jacques the Spink because he is the Archery Marshal but all Jacques has time to do is attend the static archery practices so that person is not developed in to a combat archer but rather a static archer that does combat archery when he can. There are also combat archery people that will not become archery marshals for an area because they do not want to deal with the static archery activities of that area.
 To take the combat archery community to the next level in Ansteorra we need leaders whose focus is combat archery not static archery. We have too many leaders in the combat archery community who show up under HE Octavia at Gulf to command but who cannot be bothered to armor up and shoot people any other time. We need to develop more leaders like HE Octavia who is always there to shoot combat archery, always there to put combat archery and the needs of the combat archery community first.
 The first step to developing these kinds of leaders is to separate these two functions of the archery marshals. I am not saying one person cannot fill both positions but where one cannot adequately do so, as Jacques has shown he cannot, we need the option of assigning some one else. This also makes it easier to get new people involved because as they are sent to the right person the first time.
 What will it take to get this done?

Cinaed O'Hosey
Commander of the Condottieri