Hi, my name is Jessie Slater and I have just had the best month of my life. I am 16 years old and on 22nd of August I received two pieces of news which have changed my life.
Firstly, at around 10:30am, I found out I had obtained 10 GCSE’s, all in the subjects which I needed to secure my place at College studying Sport & Exercise Science, then at around 2:30 in the afternoon, my dad got a phone call from Archery GB, announcing that I had, together with my younger brother, been offered a place on the ‘Northern Regional Performance Academy’ to train with other similar ability archers,and get coaching from Songi Woo and the Archery GB performance coaches.
A little bit about me and my Diabetes. I have always liked sport, I started playing Football for a local club when I was about 6 years old, I played for 3 years with an all girls team and we won the West Riding Girls Football league cup in 2006. Not long after we had won the cup, I started to lose a lot of motivation and energy when I was playing and in Jan of 2007 I became really ill with a viral infection. I had to go to the Dr’s quite a few times and I was eventually diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes on the 9th Feb 2007. Obviously I gave up playing football at this point and I concentrated on getting healthy again. I have tried quite a few sports since, In-Line Roller Hockey with Cleckheaton Comets, Netball with schools and also snowboarding which I still do, but in August 2009 we attended a local gala and did a have-a-go session at Archery. Following on from this, myself my brother and my dad all enrolled on an Archery beginners course with a local club called Nova Bowmen, and since then I have never looked back.
At the start of 2012, Archery GB invited young archers throughout Great Britain, to put their names forward for ‘Talent Selection & Identification’, so my dad put both me any my brother forward. In May 2012, we were invited to Lilleshall National Sports Centre, which is the home of Archery GB, for a talent selection weekend, they watched us shoot and asked us to do drills with resistance bands, we also had to do Strength & Conditioning exercises and we left Lilleshall with a 20 week programme of the same drills & exercises. Then in October we were invited back to Lilleshall for further assessment and we found out we were in the last 120 archers with a chance of being selected for the Academy’s, but we still had to continue with our drills and exercises to ensure we were ‘Engaging’ with the programme, as they were looking for people who can commit to long term training as well as people who could shoot well. Then came the final assessment on the 28th July, another trip to Lilleshall, then the wait to hear if either of us had been selected.
Fortunately, both of us had performed well and got the offer to join the academy’s. The camps run once every month from 5:00pm on a Friday afternoon till 4:00pm on the Sunday afternoon. They are very exciting but also very hard work. I have a programme of resistance band work, strength & conditioning excercises, bow drills and I have to shoot over 1000 arrows a week, all whilst keeping on top of my college work and of course my Diabetes.
I have been on a Medtronic insulin pump now just over 2 years, I LOVE my pump and it gives me the freedom to control my levels whilst training and competing at archery. Archery is an anaerobic sport which usually involves short, sharp & fast or strength and power movements, but sustained over longer periods of time in an Archery Competition. This kind of sport can increase blood glucose levels initially but then make me drop quite quickly if I am not monitoring my levels. My pump allows me set temporary basal rates both during and after archery and it is also much easier to give bolus’s to cover energy snacks etc. I also have a severe nut allergy and I have to carry epipens with me at all times, so my kitbag gets very full and heavy !
I am really enjoying the Archery GB academy’s, I am getting great coaching from the top Archery GB coaches, we have a long way to go yet but my dream is to compete for Great Britain in international Archery events and hopefully bring home a medal. The 2020 Olympics in Tokyo is my goal at the minute, and if If work hard enough, keep on top of my diabetes, there is no reason why I can’t get there, so watch out Korea (currently the best archers in the world), because here I come, hopefully with my brother as well. I am just about to set off for my next academy camp, which for me is based in Bishop Burton, near Beverly in Hull. There are 12 of us in the Northern Performance Academy, altogether in the England there are just 60 junior archers training at this level, which I feel is a great achievement for me and my bother. The other Academy’s are based at Lilleshall for the Midlands area and Hartpury in Gloucestershire for the South.
In October, Archery GB recommended me for a TASS nomination. TASS stands for Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme, This is a partnership between the sport’s National Governing Body and the Athletes education provider. TASS aims to help its athletes to balance academic life with training and competition as a performance athlete. Please click the following link for my profile page on the TASS website:
https://www.tass.gov.uk/athletes/jessie-slater.html
Me and my brother also now have our own websites as well, please click on the following links to read more info about me.
http://www.jessieslaterarchery.co.uk
http://www.lewisslaterarchery.co.uk