Falcon Archers - Membership

Junior Olympic Archery

For the youth shooter, Falcon Archers offers a facility, instruction, and encouragement to help begin and advance their shooting career. Many new shooters start out in the JOAD program.

The Junior Olympic Archery Development (JOAD) is a program of USA Archery that teaches archery to young people, provides great opportunities for awarding achievement, and helps archers to enjoy the sport recreationally or progress to the excitement of competition. The Falcon JOAD program is conducted in such a way to advance all levels of archers, from beginner to advanced, while reinforcing the enjoyment of the sport. All archers are given the opportunity to compete at tournaments on both an individual and team level. The Falcon JOAD program is open to Falcon members and their immediate family.

Our main JOAD program is an indoor season beginning in November. Practices are held on Saturday mornings in November and December. Beginning in January, a series of weekend tournaments are held at local archery clubs in the area, spanning the western side of the state from Charleoi to Mercer. At this time we also move practices to Monday evenings. These practices continue until the JOAD State Indoor Championship in April. During practices, a group of experienced USA Archery certified coaches will help the archers develop the physical and mental skills to be competitive archers.

In the spring, an outdoor JOAD season begins. This is a newer program offered by the club, and details may change from year to year.

Archers in their first year of the JOAD program are offered equipment to borrow in order to make a start in the sport of archery. All equipment is on an as-available basis, and archers are expected to supply their own equipment on or before their second year of JOAD.

When requesting information concerning the Falcon JOAD program, you should send an email to our JOAD leadership at falcon.joad@gmail.com. Please include the following information: child’s name, age, and birth date, a contact name, and a phone number. There is typically a waiting list to get into the program. Placement on the waiting list will be through notification by email. A registration form will need to be completed when space in the program becomes available.

Between JOAD seasons, or when space in not available, then the best thing a new shooting could do is to join Falcon Archers and shoot at the club. Club membership is as low as $50/year, with indoor shooting fees as low as $1.00 (for a whole day). We typically run two winter leagues, at which you can shoot with other club members. You can learn a lot by watching and shooting with our top shooters, and there are often people willing to help a new shooter learn the ropes. There are also MANY tournaments that you could attend. However, you would need to purchase your own equipment, as Falcon Archers has nothing available for public use.