GC&SU to host 2005 U.S. Intercollegiate Archery Championship

Georgia College & State University has been approved by the National Archery Association as the site for the 2005 U.S. Intercollegiate Archery Championships, announced Dr. Bruce Harshbarger, vice president and dean of students.

The championships will bring to the campus around 250 archers, coaches, and staff members from colleges and universities around the country for four days. It will be held on the second or third weekend in May of 2005, said Pat Madison, who volunteers as coach of the archery team along with Teresa Taylor, GC&SU service learning coordinator. The competition will held at the GC&SU intramural complex on West Campus.

The archers will shoot in team competition and individual competition, using olympic recurve and compound bows. The tournament will also recognize the U.S. Archery All-Academic Team as well as the Collegiate All-Americans, Madison said. It will be an outdoor competition open to the public.

"I'm so pleased that we'll be able to host the tournament for 2005," said Taylor. "We have so many things at GC&SU to showcase to visitors. We will look forward to showing them our beautiful campus and offering up some Southern hospitality."

Madison explained that the location of the championships changes each year to a different region. Since it would be held in the South in 2005, GC&SU put in a bid to host it and won the bid, despite the fact that its archery program is only two years old.

"Though the program is young, the GC&SU Archery Team has done well at the state and national level," Madison said. "That gave us some recognition."

GC&SU's top archer and the force behind its young team is Madison's son, Mike Madison, who has an impressive resume of tournament records and championships in state, regional, and national tournaments. He was named 2004 USA Archery Academic All-American, 2003 Male Athlete of the Year by the Georgia State Games Commission, ranked No. 2 in the U.S. for 2000 and 2001 in the Junior Olympic Archery Development Program Intermediate Gentlemen's Recurve Division by the National Archery Association, and awarded that program's Olympian Rank in March of 2001.

The younger Madison discovered archery at a mall in Atlanta where there was an archery range, said his father, who is a former archer himself and now a member of the board of directors of the National Archery Association Foundation and a NAA National Coach. The Madisons are from Macon.

Mike Madison was recruited by Texas A&M University, where archery is a varsity sport, but wanted to stay in Georgia, his father said. When he decided to enroll at GC&SU, Pat Madison called the school and talked with Dr. Bruce Harshbarger, who arranged for practice facilities. His son rounded up some people interested in the sport, recruited a faculty advisor in Teresa Taylor, and the rest is history. GC&SU Archery is not part of the athletics program at the school, nor classified as an intramural sport. It is operating as a club.

"We were really fortunate to get a good core of kids with good attitudes together," Madison said. "We also had great support from the school. We had quality indoor practice facilities and that gave us an opportunity to practice more frequently. Some colleges have a difficult time starting a program, but we didn't."

GC&SU will have its first major recruit this year, Sabrina Muchia of Stockbridge, Ga., one of the top-ranked junior women in the Nationals, and ranked No. 2 among junior females in the Western Hemisphere, Madison said.

"The rise and development of the archery program at GC&SU has been a spectacular thing to watch," said Harshbarger. "Archery is a perfect fit for the liberal arts mission of our university. Because it is a sport that requires a high degree of self-discipline and motivation, it tends to attract outstanding students. We're very fortunate to have access to the knowledge, energies and resources of the Madison family; that has been the key to putting GC&SU archery on the map and bringing the world of collegiate archery to Milledgeville."

Archery is a sport that anybody, no matter their size or athletic ability, can be competitive in, if they're willing to have patience and work at it, Madison said.

"If you have average athletic ability, you can excel at this sport," he said. "It is more a mental sport than a physical one."

The National Archery Association is the governing body of Olympic archery. Olympic team archers are chosen out of Junior Olympic Archery Development Program and Collegiate and Senior programs. This year's U.S. Intercollegiate Archery Championship to be held at James Madison University in Virginia, is an Olympics trials qualifier. This summer, GC&SU will host the only Junior Olympic Archery Camp in the South, under the auspices of the National Archery Association. The camp will be held June 27 through July 1.

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