Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Finally got one.

Well, I've been wanting to start a blog for a while now. I finally got around to it.
My name is Jake Kaminski, I grew up in Buffalo, New York. When  I was six years old, I went to a day camp that had archery at it. I never got down from my cabin to the archery range in time to shoot, but when I returned home my parents searched around and found out there was an archery range within a ten minute drive from my home. 

I remember my first shot vividly, I was in my back yard, 20 yards away from the target, my brother Matt watching me. I draw back point it in the direction of the target and let it fly. I hear a thud, quickly run to the target to see where it was. It landed right in the middle of the target, it could not have been any more centered in the target. My brother grabbed the bow from me and shot a few arrows but missed all 6 that he shot. Ever since then I have been hooked.

I shot compound for 9 years, started to compete nationally in 2000. In 2003 I switched from compound to recurve to shoot in the Empire State Games that was held at UB's campus. I took a silver medal for the individual competition and a gold for team. I took to the recurve dicipline quickly, after only a year of shooting the recurve I won the Outdoor National Championships. 

In October 2005 I moved to Florida with my Family and continued to shoot, still winning tournament after tournament in my final year of Junior status. I made the JR World Team that year and was asked by the National Head coach, Kisik Lee to become a Resident Athlete at the Chula Vista Olympic Training Center. On September 4th 2006 I moved out to California to start training under Coach Lee. 

Since then I have lived here for two years. Everything has been going great and things are looking up. 

After this year's gold cup, I learned a great deal of things that I need to focus on. I put these things to use during training the past couple of days, shooting near my personal best. I think things will finally take a turn for the better. 

I plan on updating these blogs fairly often with pictures and videos.