Our daughter attended the Compound Junior Dream Team Invitee Camp last week organized by USA Archery. The Junior Dream Team was originally started for recurve archers who were not old enough to qualify for the Olympics but showed great potential. A similar program for compound archers in preparing them for World Cup competition was started 2 years ago.

Our daughter applied to this camp and was the youngest of the 35 archers in attendance. There were 7 coaches from the national team at the camp which allowed for quite a bit of one on one training. The kids worked their butts off from 0700-2100 for 4 days straight including some outdoor range work in temperatures over 110 degrees. It was intentional that Phoenix was chosen to host the camp, partly to prepare the team for competing in the hot weather anticipated for the World Youth Games this year in Argentina. Unfortunately our record heat wave was not anticipated. A huge debt of gratitude to our home club, Arizona Archery Club for opening up the indoor range to the CJDT and allowing a lot of the training to be conducted indoors.

Finally had a chance to have a daddy/daughter lunch with my daughter to get her opinions on camp as well as a debrief with her coach. Overall, it was an incredibly positive experience for her. What really impresses me is her new found passion and enthusiasm for archery. My 12 year old daughter is ordering books for her Kindle on bio-mechanics so she can better understand efficiency in movement and how to avoid injury. Didn't see that one coming. She's already writing her essays for her application to the Selection Camp to be held in November. She's made it one of her goals to make the team of 35 on the Compound Junior Dream Team.

All archers came away with a packet that included suggestions for equipment and tuning, form corrections as well as process, performance and outcome based goals. My daughter did set some lofty but attainable goals for herself. Some of them made me proud and others made me laugh.

"Work hard so that my idols become my rivals."

"Fulfill Monty Python's dream, 'Always look on the bright side of life.'"

I'm proud of my daughter and how well she did. On one hand I look forward to what the future may bring. Then there's the other hand that realizes that this just got a whole lot more expensive. If she does make the team, there are mandatory national tournaments which have travel costs. More immediate is that one thing the coaches worked on extensively with her was being more aggressive in her shot process, especially with her bow arm. She's now coiling more and extending her bow arm further forward. That's lengthened her draw length by over an inch and a half. So, longer draw length modules have been ordered for both her primary and backup bows. The longer draw length will probably mean her outdoor arrows are now too soft in spine, so new outdoor arrows will need to be ordered and built. And now that she's at 25-1/2" in draw length, she can now shoot full blown target style bows and no longer have to compromise with a bow designed for shorter draw lengths.

Argh! I think I need to go out and have beers with my buddy who has 2 sons that play youth league hockey, then maybe this archery stuff won't seem so expensive...

And here are the some of the most talented youth archers in the country along with their coaches after 4 long days of camp.

I know you've heard this all before, but congratulations to both of you.

Your daughter is an awesome example of the best that youth can be, but that didn't happen in a vacuum.