Athabasca’s Ryan LeMessurier, 18, will be travelling to the Indoor World Championships for archery in France at the end of the month.
LeMessurier said he participated in the indoor Canadian and indoor Alberta championships, and these scores were mailed to the Archery Canada office.
“They take the top two scores from the indoor shoots you shot at and the score that you shot at the Indoor Canadian Championships, and they add them up and take the top three shooters out of (each) age group and class,” LeMessurier explained. “This qualified me to go to Nimes, France, to compete against the best in the world.”
LeMessurier is excited to attend the world championships.
“This is really significant for me because I can find out how I do against everybody in the world, and if I do well, I can maybe compete on the World Cup circuit in future years,” he explained.
World Championships will be held Feb. 25 – March 2.
“I will be shooting a qualification round, which is out of 600, and this will seed me against others for the elimination matches the following day,” he said.
He explained there would be a team round, and there was a possibility of him shooting in this category.
“This will also be live feed during the finals on www.archery.tv,” he said.
“I hope to do well and have a lot of fun while meeting up with some friends that I have from Canada and the USA,” he summed up.
LeMessurier said he has been shooting a bow since he was six years old.
“My dad got me interested in it because he had hunted with a bow a little bit and wanted to get me started into it,” LeMessurier explained. “It took a lot of practice at the start to even pull back my bow, let alone even hit a round bale with it.”
After many practice sessions, LeMessurier started to learn what it takes to shoot true.
“Being younger, I started to grow bigger, and soon enough I was way too big for my bow,” he explained. “I wanted a new bow really bad, and my dad told me that I had to help him around the yard to gain some money and to also save up to go and buy my own bow.”
LeMessurier said it took a lot of hard work, but he eventually saved enough money.
“The guy that I got my bow from told me that I should try joining target archery since he was the coach of the Lakeland Archers Archery Club and saw that I had the basic fundamentals down for shooting a bow and had a bit of skill,” he said. “Several years later, it was 2011, and my buddy Colton Gustafson and his family decided to carpool with my family once a week for the whole indoor season, which is from around the middle of October ‘til the snow goes away and it gets warmer.”
In 2011, LeMessurier attended his first provincial competition and finished fourth.
“After those provincials, I began to get more and more into it and started to get better equipment,” he said. “After those provincials, I have won indoor provincials once and achieved seven national records, including two in the age level above me.”
