29 May A message from the Club President

Hi all! I am Zach Raizen, the President of the Lincoln Park Archery Club (or LPAC for short). A little about me: I have been doing archery for over 15 years, and currently compete in all 3 major modern disciplines – Compound, Barebow Recurve, and Olympic Recurve bows. I have shot in competitions for indoor and outdoor target archery, field archery, and 1 3D shoot. Overall, I have probably participated in over 100 competitions. I am also a certified coach, having trained hundreds of new archers and provided more advanced coaching to several individuals, helping them further their archery journey. Finally, I am a certified archery Judge, and have judged at several National level competitions. Suffice to say, archery is a pretty large and key part of my life, and definitely a strong passion.

I recently gave a presentation on “why archery is for everyone”, and I think it is a great place to start the new LPAC blog and kick things off, as it somewhat ties into our change in mission and looks towards what we want to do and why.

In my presentation, I talk about how participation in archery is not limited by age (there are competitive archers in national competitions from age 6 up to over 100!), physical ability (lots of different bow types and draw weights for different strengths and sizes, adaptive archery for different abilities, etc.), and gender (many men and women participate at a high level). This means there is no inherent limitation for anyone to start to get involved. 

The other part of the sport I love, is that once you are involved, you have many options to find an approach that is right for you! There are so many different disciplines, whether 3D, Field, Target (indoor or outdoor), and clout (on a more limited basis). Each of these provides a different experience in the number of arrows being shot at a time, to the environment, to unique challenges presented that one can train for. When you combine the number of disciplines with the different types of bows you can shoot – there are a lot of combinations!

And that leads me back to how this ties into where LPAC plans to go next. We want to be a source of information and place where people can come and learn, ask questions, or share experiences across all of the different bow types, disciplines, competitions, or just individual practices. We hope this can bring people together and grow both personal interest, and the sport more broadly to increase opportunities available in the city of Chicago, and this country.

My final request to all is that you provide feedback and input – what do you want to see or hear about? How do you want to get content? What are your burning questions? Knowing all of that will help us deliver the most valuable content to you, in a way that is meaningful.

Stay strong, shoot ‘em straight.