The USA Archery Board of Directors (BOD) met via conference call January 12th to complete business items from the December meeting where additional details or information was needed. Below is a recap of the discussion.
Selection Procedures
The BOD approved the team selection procedures for 2011 Pan American Games, 2011 World Championships, 2011 World Para Championships, 2011 Youth World Championships, 2012 Olympic Games and 2012 Paralympic Games. In addition, they also approved the team leader and coach selection procedures for the Pan American Games, ParaPan American Games, Olympic Games, and Paralympic Games.
A note regarding the procedures:
The BOD reaffirmed current selection procedures as written for the 2011 Youth World Championships team selection procedures, in which the JOAD Nationals will be used as the ranking round for the trials, and one additional day will be added to the JOAD Nationals for the round robins. The BOD did discuss the possibility of having archers have to "declare" their age division for the year, but declined requiring it at this time.
The BOD also approved a Medal Contender Clause recommended by the USOC for the Olympic Games. Note that this clause and process is intended to RARELY be used and would only be in effect in the most exceptional of circumstances, subject and available only to competitors who have previously met strict performance criteria. The Medal Contender Clause allows for a hearing for a deemed "medal contender" if they miss one of the three legs of the trials for a verifiable illness, injury or special circumstance. If the archer misses an event, they must file a petition to USA Archery within 24 hours. The Board of Justice will then review the case to determine if the claim was indeed something the archer could not avoid and deemed as a true "exceptional circumstance". If the archer passes the BOJ review, they would have to shoot-off against the third place archer to win a position on the team. The Board had much discussion on this topic and in the end, felt that both the USOC and USAA shared a common goal and that is to make sure that we are sending our top archers to the Olympics. This is the intent of this clause.
National Ranking System (NRS)
The BOD approved the National Ranking System. Athletes will begin to accumulate points in the NRS starting with the Arizona Cup in 2011, however, the system will not be used for the selection of teams or any benefits until the beginning of 2012. For example, the 2012 USAT team will be selected based on the National Ranking System. The 2012 World Cup teams will be selected based on the NRS and any USOC benefits allocated in 2012 will be assigned by your national ranking. All 2011 World Cup teams and any associated USOC benefits will be selected based on the current Rolling Ranking system.
2011 Tournament Schedule
The BOD approved a final 2011 tournament schedule. There were two changes from the original release of the schedule. The first was the date conflict between the USIAC event and Gold Cup. As background information, Gold Cup was originally moved up in the schedule so that we would be able to select the World Championship team in time to allow them to travel to the second World Cup in Turkey together. We felt having this experience together as a team was a necessary warm up for the World Championships. However, when we moved the event, we ended up with an additional conflict. The Gold Cup organizers have graciously ONCE AGAIN moved their event up another week to May 12-15th.
The other change to the schedule concerns the first leg of the Olympic Trials. The trials were scheduled to be in conjunction with the So Cal Showdown in August. However, this date conflicted with the World University Games. The only fall options were to move the trials to the Texas Shoot-out slot or to move it to the last week in October. The Board felt that having the event that late in the year was not fair to those archers living in the northern states, and felt the best option was to move the first leg of the Olympic Trials to Texas during the week previously slotted for the Texas Shoot-out. Therefore, the Texas Shoot-out will NOT take place in 2011. We will have 5 USAT events instead of the originally planned 6. The Olympic trials will run from September 28-October 1, 2011 in College Station, TX.
Bylaws Revisions
The BOD also continued discussion related to some ongoing bylaws changes, however, no changes were officially approved at this meeting.
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