Junior archery team off to World Youth Archery Championship

A team of junior archers leave this Friday for the 2013 World Youth Archery Championship in Wuxi, China. This championship is the most prestigious competition on the youth-archery calendar, other than the Youth Olympics. The competition starts with registration and official practice on 13 October, with the last medal matches being on 20 October. Only the best-ranked archers from each Member Association of World Archery can participate.
The team was selected according to a continuous ranking system, based on competition results over  12 months before final selection.
The team members are Babette Taljaard, Xander Reddig, Ruan van Staden, Sebastian Fechter, and Joubert Snyman.
Van Staden, Fechter and Snyman will compete in the Compound Cadette Men category and Reddig in the Recurve Cadette category. The only female member, Taljaard, will also compete in the Compound Cadette category, but for women.
All five archers will take part in the individual competitions, while Van Staden, Fechter and Snyman will also take part in the team competition.
Taljaard and Reddig hail from the Northern Archery Club in Tsumeb, while Van Staden, Fechter and Snyman are members of SKW Archers in Windhoek.
Preparation and training was done under the watchful eye of the national coach, Marja Woortman and Frank Reddig from Tsumeb. Woortman is also team leader for this championship.
A final high-intensity training weekend was held in Windhoek in September. During this session, the team was visited by the Chinese Ambassador to Namibia, HE Xin, who promised support and assistance to the team when they are in China. The team was also visited by Ndeuli Hamutumwa, commissioner of the Namibia National Sports Commission responsible for archery.