Joining Us:

Our club is one of several in the area, but the only one that is a Field, as well as Target Archery club. Target archery, conducted at set distances on a flat playing field, is practiced by us at Hazelwick School, Crawley. We tend to abandon the place in winter due how muddy & sodden the ground can become, but in the summer we practice three times a week; Monday & Friday evenings and Sunday mornings. We intend to expand in 2009 and have a further evening, specifically for those who want coaching. During the winter, formal shooting reduces to the Sunday mornings, and is moved to Furnace wood, our Field Course.

The field course (actually woodland) is avalable all year but for August, when we prepare for our annual September shoot. This shoot is one of the major field events of the year, is usually full for both days, and brings many of the England squad together to compete as individuals. The rest of the year the course is left up, with half the targets 'marked' and half, 'unmarked' (refers to known and unknown distances to the target). Members may shoot there any day of the week. However, Juniors are not permitted to shoot on their own, and no archer should be on their own when with juniors - unless they are the parent or guardian of the junior.

Annual Costs:

Access to the above is part of the annual fee; £70 for adults, £10 for juniors. For those who want to shoot more than once in the winter months, then we provide an indoor venue. Shooting indoors during the winter months is an extra fee. This is held Thursday evenings at 8pm, lasts for two hours at the Copthorne Preparatory School, Copthorne. The season runs from October through to March.

Benefits:

Additionally, the club holds a library of archery books which can be loaned by members. We also have a growing volume of 'tools' that all archers would like to have, but few can afford. this includes arrow straighteners, arrow cutters, fletching jigs and string making jigs, arrow speed indicators and point scales. All of these are available for free loan, or for use with an instructor or coach.

What do you need:

Membership is subject to having attained a certain level of knowledge. All clubs provide training courses, and normally hold ours in February. It is a 5 week course held on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, 2 hours each session, at the Copthorne Preparatory School. The course will teach health and safety, equipment, two modern styles of shooting, and ensure competency to 20 meters. The fee is £55 per head and includes all equipment and tuition for the five sessions.

We discount membership to those who take up the sport after training. Juniors receive their first year's membership free, and the adult fee is discounted by £10.

After the course, the archer is expected to buy their own equipment. Most ' kits ' cost around £150-250 and are better value than second hand equipment - which rarely suits the second owner. (unlike golf, bows and arrows are sized to fit the individual archer and their style of shooting. The coaches on the training course will measure all aspiring archers at the end of the course). Young adults will invariably need to replace arrows as they grown (the child, not the arrow) and arrows become too short. The same may happen with the limbs of a bow, so an early investment in equipment should be on the conservative side.

What the club expects:

I indicated that we hold a major Field event. Well, we also conduct a target event too. Both of these events bring in very important revenue to the club, revenue that, had we not obtained it through events, we would have otherwise had to raise our fees quite substantially. Hence we do ask of members, that they reserve at least another 10 to 20 hours per year in helping us maintain, prepare, or help run, these events. The work is very diverse, from helping juniors to score their arrows, or helping to run a Tea tent, to felling trees and clearing undergrowth.

On a week to week basis wether its be at Perrywood, Field or Indoor, members are required to help set up/take down targets where they can. 

Juniors:

We also have a growing club of Juniors, and we are proud to have had juniors who have gone on to shoot for the County, and for England, both as juniors and adults. However, with the changes in practice and the growing numbers of juniors joining us, we are eager to seek the help of other members and parents in helping maintain the youth side of the club, add vitality and some more structure to it, and help promote ourselves whenever possible.