Archery coach Kyle Juntunen went to Colorado Springs, Colo., to an archery convention for U.S. archery coaches. The coaches received training from Olympic archery coaches and spent time interacting with one another.

“I got a lot of good coaching information, I met a lot of cool people and it was fun,” Juntunen said. “I was roommates with a coach who owns an archery pro-shop and an archery range in Tennessee. There were coaches from Minnesota, coaches from California, it was kind of all over the place.”

At the USA facilities, the headquarters for the Olympics, to go into the Olympics and the World Cup, coaches received training from Coach Kisik Lee, head of the U.S. Olympic team, and from Coach Guy Krueger, head of the Women’s Archery team at USA Archery.

“It was kind of scary having someone of [Coach Lee’s] standing in the archery community coming to talk to you about your form but it was also very informative,” Juntunen said. “It was good to get that feedback from someone who is making archers into gold medalists.”

Juntunen also received training from Coach Lanny Bassham. Coach Bassham is an Olympic gold medalist rifle shooter who has won 22 titles and set four world records. In the 24 years since then he has trained coaches and Olympians on mental management. Juntunen said he received good advice from him.

“[Lanny Basham was] really entertaining, a really good speaker,” Juntunen said. “One of the things [Bassham] said was ‘don’t try to win, just trust the process.’ What a lot of people do is they get on the line, and they are trying so hard to win the tournament that they stop doing the process that they have been trained to do. They get out of the rhythm that they were supposed to set. In order to be a great archer you have got to get that mental game.”

The archery state tournament will be April 1 this year. Juntunen talked about coming home and the process he is undergoing to prepare the Allen Archery team for the state tournament.

“For me that was going to be one of the hardest parts is just coming back and trying to implement some of these things,” Juntunen said. “There was already definitely some positives coming from the team. So it is going to be a matter of not rushing it and trying not to give them too much information at one time and letting them get used to what they need to do, that way we can look ahead and hopefully have a great state tournament.”