It was a very successful weekend for Yukon archers in the Canadian Regional Indoor Championships held March 6 to 8 across the country.
A total of 13 Yukon archers participated in the event, earning a total of six medals.
The championships are a multi-site event, with archers at various local clubs participatingand submitting scores to Archery Canada, who in turn release the final standings shortly after.
In the Yukon, archers gathered on March 8 — just a day after the Arctic Winter Games were cancelled — to compete.
Leading the way for the Yukon were Kemper Murray and Emmett Kapaniuk who won gold in men’s cub barebow and compound categories, respectively.
The three silver medals went to Emma Tom Tom, Delia Therriault and Mitchell Rudolph. Tom Tom competed in the women’s junior barebow category, Therriault in the women’s pre-cub barebow category and Rudolph in the men’s cadet barebow category.
The lone bronze for the Yukon went to Gabriela Browning who competed in the women’s cadet barebow category.
Coach Warren Kapaniuk said the results were impressive given eight of the 11 youth archers were on the Arctic Winter Games team.
“I think they performed really well considering it was the day after Arctics had been cancelled,” said Warren. “For them to still come out and shoot as well as they did, I think the kids themselves were really surprised, when the preliminary results came out, (about) how well they did compared to other people across the country.”
The event was also supposed to be the final dress rehearsal, so to speak, for athletes and officials before the games started the next week.
For Warren, the results from the barebow shooters — particularly those competing for the first time — were impressive, as was the gold for Emmett.
“He ended up with two golds at the outdoor nationals last year, he finished first overall indoors in Canada last year, and then he started off this year with winning the indoor nationals as well,” said Warren. “His performance over the last year has been pretty amazing.”
This event was just one of a half dozen events planned for the competitive archers, but mass cancellations mean the season’s competitions will be less numerous than planned.
One advantage Yukon archers do have, though, is the ability to hold events sanctioned by Archery Canada.
“We can still run Archery Canada events in Whitehorse because we have the officials and stuff,” said Warren. “So even though the kids aren’t able to go out and compete, they’ll still be able to shoot competitive matches and have their scores go into Archery Canada’s database for when they select future (Canadian teams). We’ll probably do more of them than we originally planned since we’re missing some of (the Outside events) because of the tournaments being cancelled.”
Perhaps most encouraging of all was the infusion of some new youth archers into the comeptitive stream.
“For a while, it looked like we were just going to have one group of archers, and as they aged out, there wasn’t going to be anybody coming in,” said Warren. “Now there are some younger archers coming into the comeptitive stream, so I’m hoping that this wil be a long-term program. … That’s kind of our long-term goal — have a sustaining competitive archery program.”
Contact John Hopkins-Hill at john.hopkinshill@yukon-news.com