Medals galore for Jamaican archers at debut int’l competition

JAMAICA’S ARCHERY team showed their class by copping six medals at their debut international competition, the Caribbean Development Championships, in the Dominican Republic.

A team of nine Jamaicans competed at the meet on Wednesday and Thursday in three different categories.

In the development senior men’s 50m category, Jamaica was represented by Page Brown, Kristof Street, Sean Pierre, Christoph Ellis, Ronald Deenah and David Martin. Anjesh Zodge and Sean-Luke Pierre competed in the development junior men’s 50m category, Maia Garbutt participated in the development junior women 50m category, and para-archer Acee Green competed in the beginner senior men 30m category.

Jamaica secured a medal in all three categories as Deenah claimed a gold medal by having the highest score in the qualification round, and silver in the elimination rounds, which was the finals. Garbutt also earned two medals, silver in the qualification round and gold in the finals. Street captured a silver medal in qualification and Green won the bronze medal match to finish third.

Head coach Page Brown said this is an amazing achievement for Jamaica, especially with the sport being practically new to the island.

INCREDIBLE FEELING

“It’s an incredible feeling, I almost tore up numerous times when I saw how many of my students had been getting medals. As confident as we were that we were going to come home with something, it was far from our wildest dream that we would be coming home with six medals,” Brown said.

As also the athlete development manager of the team, Brown said the achievement was made even more special seeing that they had a short preparation.

“We actually accomplished something that other nations found more than difficult because all of our archers have been shooting for less than three years, some as short as eight months because our para-archer, he started this year in April, and he got to a level competing against able-bodied archers. This wasn’t a para division, he was shooting against able-bodied people and he was still able to come in third,” he said. “And for the archers who did not win a medal, it was definitely not an easy loss, it was a fight to the end.”

Captain of the team, Sean Pierre, said they worked tirelessly to make this achievement possible.

“(Our success was because of) hard work and dedication of the guys, with little or no resources,” Pierre said.

Pierre, who is also a coach and manager for the team, said he hopes that due to this achievement, the team will attract more public and private sponsors.

“JRA is our biggest supporter and I have to lift my hand to them. As per companies out there (and) the wider cross section of Jamaica, they did not know or they don’t know archery so it was hard to sell archery to them,” Pierre explained.

“It was so new to Jamaica, I think a lot corporate Jamaica were kind of scared to jump in so early, but I am hoping that now that we came to this competition and proved our worth I am hoping that they will now look at us differently and say ‘OK, now this is a sport that we can take further and support more’,” he added.

The archers, who are governed and mainly sponsored by the Jamaica Rifle Association (JRA), said they have plans to go to Trinidad in November to compete in one of their national tournaments.

“We’re trying to get as much experience internationally as possible,” Brown said.