JOAD Club Spotlight

Cincinnati Junior Olympians (CJO)

Cincinnati Junior Olympians got its start when George Helwig was asked to develop a grass-roots development program to train area youth for target archery in 1966.  Cincinnati had long been a center of NAA activity; the environment for archery was ideal and well known world class archers such as Ann Clark and Nancy Vonderheide were fixtures in the local archery scene. 

For almost thirty five years, this program was supervised by the Pierson family, who operated an indoor archery range near the University of Cincinnati. They coached many area archers to prestigious titles and it was at Pierson's archery range that two time Olympic Champion and Current CJO Director, Darrell Pace started his archery career. 

CJO has had several locations over its almost half century life., including archery ranges, a high school gymnasium, a sporting goods shop, and a National Guard Armory. The instructors have changed over the years, as well. Jim Coombe and his wife Liz joined the Piersons, Darrell Pace, and two JOAD parents, Mark Feldman and Ross Pfeiffer, to help run the CJO program.

In 1999, CJO moved to a National Guard Armory which permitted two nights of shooting a week:  many of the more avid students also shotlocal leagues run by the Coombes.  The Coombes owned a small farm in nearby Mason, Ohio and set up an outdoor range which became the summer training facility for CJO.  The Coombes encouraged CJO members to attend tournaments and support the NAA mail in event and CJO archers started winning events around the state as well as titles in the mail in tournament.

With more shooting opportunity available, CJO soon regained its status as the dominant JOAD club in Ohio. In March of 2001, RELO closed due to the health of its owner.  Jim and Liz Coombe, along with avid 3D archer Jason Abner, opened a range called Bethany Archery which, along with the National Guard Armory, was home to CJO. During the months following the 9-11 bombing, the Armory was closed and Bethany became the host of CJO. After the Armory became again available, Bethany Archery was used to host training sessions for CJO and served as the equipment source for most of the students.  Students were encouraged to participate in Bethany leagues.

Over the years, several JOAD parents stepped in to assist with the CJO program. Steven Cornell and Rich Owens, fathers of top CJO archers Alex Cornell and Chris Owens, became integral parts of the club along with archer Patricia Hider.  With Steve and Rich's leadership, CJO bid successfully for the 2001 Northern Region JOAD tournament and with the success of that tournament, came the 2002 US JOAD National Championships. In 2004, CJO along with Warren County, was awarded the Olympic archery trials.Additionally, CJO Director Darrell Pace became the President of the NAA.

In 2005, Bethany Archery closed. However, the Coombes built a large indoor range on their property in Mason.  This allowed CJO archers almost unlimited range time for both indoor and outdoor shooting.   Additionally, the Coombes had obtained a large stock of high quality recurve bows-many of which came from CJO friend and supporter, the late Ann Hoyt, when Sky closed after the death of Earl Hoyt, Jr.  This meant that CJO students had access to top gear with which to compete.    The next year, CJO hosted another JOAD Nationals and again Steve Cornell was the chairman.  Three CJO coaches participated in various training sessions with the new Olympic Coach, Kisik Lee and Steve became an important part of teaching the BEST system to other coaches. He also was widely respected as a tournament manager and ran one of the Nationals in Colorado Springs.  He and Darrell assisted other tournament directors including the Jr. USAT ranking shoot in Southern Illinois.

With several experienced coaches and the ability of CJO archers to shoot indoors or outside several times a week, CJO's success in major events continued to grow. Melissa Ash of Kentucky won two NFAA championships, an IFAA championship and was the Cadet Jr. USAT member in 2006.  Twins Daniel and Sean McLaughlin became highly ranked recurve archers and both are currently on the Jr. Dream Team.  Sean Curtin won the 2009 National Target Championship and finished that year as the #2 ranked Cadet.  Ian Coombe took 2nd at JOAD nationals as a ten year old; he later won the NFAA indoor. Austin Reifstek, after 9 months of archery, took second in the 2009 JOAD nationals.  Another CJO member, Brent Hankins, not only earned his gold Olympian as a compound archer, he won the 2007 WCSA Junior World Crossbow title and then the 2009 Senior Title in Portugal.

In August, 2009, CJO helped run the U.S National Target Championships in Hamilton Ohio: Steve and Darrell were the directors of that successful shoot and this shoot will return to Hamilton in July of 2010.  Though Butler County was the official host for the tournament, CJO members ran the event and did most of the work as field crew. 

CJO recently hosted the Ohio State JOAD indoor, and CJO archers won every individual event they contested including all four boys recurve divisions as well as the Junior Girls recurve and two compound divisions. CJO also won the overall club recurve trophy for the 9th time in the last ten years.  CJO currently has four active members who are gold Olympians including double gold Olympian Sean Curtin, and indoor gold Olympians Daniel McLaughlin, Brent Hankins and Chelsea Obrebski. Seven CJO members won medals at national archery events last year.

CJO's continued success stems from the many years of experience its leadership has obtained as well as a constant influx of parents who fully support the club's mission. This combined with easy access to range time has combined to make CJO one of the premierJOAD clubs in the USA. 

Cincinnati JOAD Olympians can be reached at XXXXXXXX and they hold classes on XXXXXXX evenings.