BY JOHN HOUANIHAU
IN preparation for next year’s 2023 Pacific Games, Solomon Islands Archery Training Squad has been training hard for the past months at the Solomon Island National Institute of Sports in East Honiara.
This week sees 20 archers hard at work at their training at the Solomon Island National Institute of Sports (SINIS) grounds. The archers are divided into three training groups: The talent Identification Team (TID), the current squad members, and, new beginners.
The scheduled series of training starts on Monday and continues through to Saturday.
The goals of the training include, conditioning, strength, weight training stability workout, and compound and recurve shooting skills, such a series of scheduled training are established to prepare the Solomon Islands archers ahead of next year’s 2023 Pacific Games set for 19 November to 2 December 2023 in Honiara.
“Good to see our local archers progressing every day on the series of scheduled training despite faced with challenges on equipment such as good competition bows, arrows, and shooting boards,” Solomon Islands Archery Federation Assistant Coach Kelly Baedonga told RAW SPORTS.
Kelly continued to say that apart from the challenges faced with inadequate and quality competition equipment, another major challenge is the lack of perfect practice ground for archers.
“The Solomon Islands Institute of Sports ground is suitable for basic training, but to reach international standards, the archers need a proper training center,” Kelly said. “Our archers only train for the 20m and 30m distances; they haven’t yet shot 40m and 70m because there is no space.”
According to Sports regulations, in professional archery games, you have to shoot your arrow as close to the center of the target as possible.
“In games like the Olympics and professional tournaments, the distance between the competitor and the target is 70 meters.
“Archery is played by hitting arrows on the target. This target is usually a board of black color. Both players get alternative turns in which they aim at the best part of the board surface, i.e. usually the middle part.
“The player who hits closer to the middle part or precisely hits at the middle section wins the game.”
