Competency Assessment

We know that not all new members to Illawarra Archers are new to the sport of archery. For those who have completed a beginner’s course with another archery club or who have equivalent experience we offer an alternative pathway to membership of our club without completing our Archery Beginner’s Course. We call this an Archery Competence Assessment.

The competency assessment has three main elements:

  1. The basic club safety rules and our qualifying system are explained to you.
    • You need to be confident with understanding all of these and agree to abide by them
  2. An assessment of your equipment will be carried out.
    • For compound bows the peak draw weight is limited to 60lb. You must be able to demonstrate suitable control of your release aid if used, and bow over the full draw cycle.
    • For all bow types you should be able to demonstrate that you can assemble and maintain your bow in a safe and serviceable condition.
  3. An assessment of your shooting.
    • As a target club, we expect you to be able to demonstrate an appropriate form for safe shooting including a safe draw technique, an appropriate anchor and a safe release.
    • We also expect you to be able to group your arrows on a 122cm face at 20m in a consistent way. To measure this, we will ask you to shoot and score 18 arrows (3 ends) and will record the score. There is no “pass mark” but we would expect a competent archer to be able to achieve scores of around:
Bow Style   Score (/180)
 Seniors Juniors
Compound 120+ 110+
Recurve Sighted 90+ 70+
Recurve Barebow 70+ 50+
Longbow 70+ 40+

If you are deemed to be competent, you will be able to apply for provisional membership of the club. Archers deemed not yet competent will need to undertake an Archery Beginner’s Course or other instruction before being able to apply for membership.

If you believe you meet the criteria described above you can request a competency assessment by clicking on the button below.