So today we had the second annual Arizona JOAD Coach's Symposium. Basically a workshop our state board puts together for coaches. Our daughter's coach was one of the speakers who gave a presentation on the NTS (National Training System) Part of his presentation was comparing it to other methods. Well, we happened to be next to a range with a lot of lightweight recurve bows for beginner classes, so the presentation took an unexpected turn and we went hands on practical.

I'm standing on the line getting a feel for the different techniques and suddenly I have legendary collegiate archery coach Terry LeBeau standing behind me coaching me on the different techniques. If that wasn't enough, 2 time Olympic silver medalist Rick McKinney joined in. So here I am, a lowly local coach in a JOAD club receiving instruction from two of the legends of the sport.

Yes, I'm a compound archer and I absolutely suck at shooting a recurve and my form with one needs a lot of work. But both were incredibly helpful and took a lot of time with me working on the fundamentals. I seriously don't know of any other sport where this would happen. Yet another reason I'm glad to be along for the ride on my daughter's journey with archery.

A slight detour, never having gotten past my high school archery lessons ...

The CD in the truck is a book on tape: Trickster's Point by William Kent Krueger. Read by David Chandler. It's a mystery about a pair of murders in Minnesota committed by bow. Someone stalked the victims "the Old Way" near a reservation. The story is peppered with Ojibwe.

Makes me want to give archery another try.

Loved my recurve, when I used to shoot all the time, even though I was underwhelming. It was a joy just to be out there.

Would have loved to have been in your shoes, though, getting that coaching! I might have moved up from laughably bad to almost average!