My first contact with archery was in my first semester of university (in Tübingen) in 2000. In the university sports program there was archery, and since I wanted to try out a lot of things (I tried fencing, climbing, tai chi and more) I came to the beginners course. The people were fun, the archery was great, the scenery of our archery range was fantastic – we did shoot in the castles moat on top of the city – so I stayed with it. The next semesters I started to assist and then teach more and more myself in the beginners courses. We also went to some 3D Competitions and had a lot of fun there, and we went to the DHM (German Universities Competition) a few times. And we even started a medieval archery section (and a club) for a while and hosted a shooting range at medieval markets. All of that was purely with instinctive (or also called intuitive) archery.
I had a shorter break during my semester abroad and after my time at university I had a longer break from archery from around 2007 to 2020. In those 12-13 years I never fully lost contact with it, since i went to LARPs (Live-Action-Role-Play), as an archer, and soon started to be the organizer and judge for the archery competition at one of the bigger LARPs. My fire stayed alive, but at a low burn.
As I was working at the University Stuttgart, I began to wonder if I could just join the university club again and I noticed there was no archery in the sports program. So with some checking and after some meetings it was decided, that I just give the archery course. But then… Covid came and we had to postpone.
Summer semester 2022. Covid was gone and we could finally restart. Full speed ahead! We bought a few beginners bows, there were some old targets from a previous short stint and we tried it with 9 participants. The test in the first semester was successfull, we went full ahead. Bought new targets, a few new targets every other semester, a few more beginners bows… … and now we are at 60 participants per semester – a few repeatedly (the maximimum is 7 semesters long) and every semester at least 12 new beginners. This year (2026) we go to the DHM the third time.
During this time I made three other archery journeys simultaneously: I took some courses to improve my teaching skills and I learned new techniques and went to a lot of competitions.
My teaching journey is described very shortly. First I took the course to become a certified range captain (Schießsportleiter), and then the course to become a licenced Trainer for Archery (and general for sports) at level C. I also got the Youth-Trainer-Licence to train Youths (JuBaLi) and made an extra course as Trainer for Children and Youths.
My journey to learn some more techniques ranged from changing from instinctive archery to barebow archery with stringwalking (I also tried other aiming techniques) – with that came my first carbon ILF bow, my first new expensive bow after I bought my first bow in 2001. I bought a one-piece hunting recurve for fun, but now it is only my LARP bow. Then I also started learning horsebow archery, without the horse part. I went to a one-day course near Munich, where we actually DID sit on a horse (but it was led by a professional horsebackrider) and I also learned the thumb drawing technique. I even tried Kyudo a few times. The last part of this journey was learning to shoot olympic style recurve, with stabilizer, sight and clicker – and my second carbon ILF bow.
The last journey were the competitions. For 2 years I went to a lot of competitions. I tried all the World Archery formats for barebow there are: indoor 18m and 25m, outdoor 50m, 3D and Field Archery. I even went to the states competition (Landesmeisterschaft) in 3D and Field Archery, and I went to the International Indoor Competition at Nimes (France), where I even earned a world ranking (low, but not at the bottom).
Coming to now.
I still am trainer at the university course, and give more and more advanced lectures besides the two beginners courses per year. My competition life is a little smaller and I go only what I like most (3D, some indoor, some field). I am thinking about giving private lessons for a fee. And I still have to learn Hankyu and Kyudo archery. And let’s see where I go now.