Tournament Chairman
Hi Members,
My name is David Bacon and I am the Tournament Chairman this year and I hope for many years to come. For those of you who don’t know me, I have been a Club member for 11 years and the Club Scorekeeper and Website Administrator for almost as long.
My first board position at the Club was as Tournament chairman after we started the JOAD program and needed a board member to oversee it. When our Membership Chair resigned I volunteered to take on the task of auditing our membership roster, implementing our new membership requirements and accounting system and start a standard operating procedures document for the position. Then, to find a member who was crazy enough take it on and hand it over to them as a complete package. I accomplished that and Roland is the current membership chair. It is a very difficult and time consuming position and he doing a great job.
Since one board member cannot hold two positions at the Club, I asked Chriss Stout to take over the Tournament Chair position early. He had been in training for the position for 6 months and I had full confidence that he would proudly fill the role and he did a fine job but as we all know, volunteering for a board position at the Club can be very time consuming and can take you away from the sport you love. Chris stepped down with our appreciation and Jason Conner was temporarily appointed to the position.
If you know me, you know I am not one to give any weight to rumors. But I had several first hand conversations with members and parents who were very concerned about the direction the Tournament Chair position was going. No disrespect toward Jason, but the general consensus was that his position seemed to be far afield from its intended role. Basically, the position is to staff, fund and facilitate the education programs at our club. To make sure they have everything they need to bring up the next generation of Archers to our sport. This is an important role for me because I was told over and over again that it would never work at Oranco…been there, done that. Against the odds, we have a thriving JOAD program. Our goal is to produce well rounded archers who are comfortable competing in Target, Field and 3-D competitions and hope that they continue in our sport for the rest of their lives. I was asked to return to the Tournament Chair Position to bring it back to its roots. To help Educate the next generation of Archers at Oranco and knowing what is expected of me, I accepted and will fill that role to the best of my ability.
So why doesn’t the Tournament Chair have anything to do with Tournaments…good question. The plan was to get the education programs up and running and then to take some of the pressure off Chriss Bowles as Range Captain and roll the State Championships off his plate and on to the Tournament Chairs plate. Well, the untimely resignation of our membership chair postponed that plan but now we are back on track and moving forward with it. We will be having several By-Laws meetings in the coming months to amend our By-Laws to make the Tournament Chair position responsible for facilitating the State Championships when they are held at our club. More on that once we get it all hammered out.
A Quick Note about OUR JOAD PROGRAM…Yes these are our Junior Archers. Most are club members and deserve the same respect as any other club member or archer on the line. It is certain that none of us will live forever and our Junior archers are the future of our sport. They work very hard and are constantly showing their dedication to Archery. They are an inspiration for all of us so next time you are at the practice butts, cut them some slack…if you want to shoot the shorter targets, remember what it was like to be in their tiny shoes. Please be respectful and share the target…LEAD BY EXAMPLE!
David Bacon
(909) 217-4441
