IFAA 2006 World Championships

Jun 06: Between 11th June 2006 and 17th June 2006, the 2006 IFAA World Championships were held and hosted by Wide Bay Archers on the beautiful Sunshine Coast at Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia, approximately 290 kilometres or 174 miles north of the capital, Brisbane. (If you are using Internet Explorer or Firefox as your browser, hover your cursor over each image to read the photo captions)

It turned out to be a great international event in normally sunny Queensland - except for the rain. During the four day event, over 600 shooters competed together with Team Abbey Archery - Hooter Shooters. Everyone had a beaut time making new friends from all over the world, as well as catching up with old friends. These wet conditions could not dampen the spirit and enthusiasm of competing archers. Officials and the Wide Bay club are to be heartily congratulated for staging such a fantastic shoot at a lovely venue.

The Abbey Archery 4.5 tonne travelling pro shop truck attended the shoot and turned out to be a boon to many shooters requiring last minute repairs or replacement gear. Abbey displayed for sale many new and innovative products which some archers may have never previously seen "in the flesh". We were flattered by comments by some overseas customers remarking that Abbey "is as big as Lancasters". During the tournament, our staff were run off their feet and without the instinting help of some of our shooting team members Jeanette, Kev, Shayna, Katie, Liz, Mark, Jeff and Brian, we would not have been able to cope and provide the service to the many customers. Special mention needs to be made of Jeanette Dowd, our Brisbane Store Manager and her husband, Kev, who both unselfishly helped out at our Abbey Pro Shop before and after each day":s events and between competition rounds. We sold a wide variety of products from high end shafts like X10, ACE, ACC shafts to the large numbers of accessories.In addition, some new compound bows were purchased. We were also called upon to fix equipment and to sort out problems with gear for local and international shooters, which was much appreciated by archers as it allowed them to continue competing.

We were thrilled to have the support of one of our manufacturers whom we are proud to represent in Australia, BCY, Inc Fibers Division of Middletown, Connecticut, USA, manufacturers of bowstring and serving material. BCY's Bob Deston and his son, Chris helped make bowstrings, re-serve strings and give demonstrations on how to make a string. We wish to convey our sincere thanks to Bob & Chris for their great help over the course of the event. Whenever Chris was manning the string jig, he always seemed to attract a large crowd of onlookers who found string making both an interesting and fascinating thing. I am sure there are many string makers about who can relate to the relaxing side of making a string and the satisfaction one derives from the finished string. After the IFAA titles, Bob and Chris along with another US shooter friend of theirs, Leo, came to Sydney, some 1225 kilometres or 735 miles south of Hervey Bay. Tony from Abbey Archery picked up the guys from their city hotel and brought them out to the Abbey Castle Hill facility to see our operation first hand. Bob was particularly impressed with the size of our facility and the various archery products we actually made up on our premises.

Another of our business partners, Spot-Hogg Archery Products Inc of Harrisburg, Oregon, USA also attended the Championships at Hervey Bay including CEO of Spot-Hogg, Steve Johnson, and his son and daughter in law, Cabe & Tina. Cabe is involved, like the rest of the Johnson family in making and developing the great Spot-Hogg sights which the company has become renowned for, while Tina is Vice President of Sales. The Johnsons were on hand to help out when they could and give shooters some sound advice on Spot Hogg products.

We were also able to help Dennis Daigle, a Martin Staff Shooter from Canada, with some new limbs for his bow and he was also very keen to help out when we were busy, which was most of the time. Dennis also gave Abbey a very nice "bouquet" on the Archery Talk forum and this is most gratifying and appreciated.

We received many pleasing comments during and after the competition on how, without any fuss, we were able to help many competitors with gear, advice, information and for anyone who may not have been thanked for their remarks, we say thank you very much. Quite a number of archers have already decided to attend the 2007 IFAA titles to be held in the Republic of Namibia, a country in southern Africa on the Atlantic or west coast.