The 2017 Archery 3D Indoor Championships will be hosted at the Bold Center in Lac La Biche, beginning Friday and wrapping up on Sunday.
The 2017 Archery 3D Indoor Championships will be hosted at the Bold Center in Lac La Biche, beginning Friday and wrapping up on Sunday.
The national tournament will feature close to 300 archers from all over Canada - including at least nine from the Lakeland Archery club in Lac La Biche - competing against one another in an unusual archery style, which doesn’ t exactly feature the standard stand and shoot at a target.
“Between a mock mountain with a waterfall, shooters will be firing at 3D foam animals,” said event organizer and Archery Alberta President Rene Schaub. “Each course has 27 animals, of which three appear at a time. The score at the end will be whether you can hit the vital organs, which is eight points, if you hit a small circle there it will be 10 and if you hit a really small circle it will be 11. If you hit the rest of the animal except for the hooves and antlers you get five points. If you hit the hooves and antlers you get zero.”
The 3D animals will be a variety of alligators, deer, turkey, wolverines and other animals of all sizes.
Friday will be a registration and practice day, Saturday will be the start of the competition and Sunday will boast the Grand Prix, which features the final eight shooters. By the time the Grand Prix is finished, a male and female champion will be crowned with an award from Archery Canada.
The courses will be built on one of the Bold Center’ s ice rinks and both of their field houses. The curling rink will be used as a practice area and the Devon Room will be used for the event’ s opening ceremonies.
The national tournament this weekend is an open event, where no one had to qualify by winning another tournament.
Spectators can attend the event for free and there will be concession stands selling snacks, display booths and people selling local carvings.
The opening ceremonies will start on Saturday at 9:15 a.m. and the competition will start at 9:45 a.m. that same day.
The event is also in many senses a preview for a bigger event, as the World Archery Championships are also set to take place in Lac La Biche in 2019.
