Chris Carroll
Chris first started archery in 1949 whilst he was an engineering apprentice at a company in Manchester. He continued as a casual archer for a few years, attaining ‘2nd Class’ classification, until he joined the Royal Air Force in 1953.
During the early 1970s he continued with casual archery when they lived in Stafford until moving to Ampthill in 1978. His interest in archery continued on a casual basis, when his work permitted, until in 1988 he joined Clophill Archery Club.
He did many jobs for the club including being Treasurer for several years, being one of the Club Representatives on the County Committee, and instituting the ‘200 club’, which was a mechanism for keeping beginners interested after their first flush of enthusiasm. In 1993 he started to write a monthly news sheet and wrote 48 editions before leaving the club in 1997.
In 1992, while serving on the County Committee as a Club Representative for Clophill, he was approached by Enid Johnson, the then Chairman of the County, to become Secretary of the County Committee. As he was about to retire from full time employment he agreed and turned his energy and enthusiasm to shaping the County Archery Association as we know it today. He held the position until 2002.
Initially he found it hard going as the County Association had no funds and very little equipment of its own and depended on hiring kit from the County clubs to run tournaments. The clubs saw it as a distant and independent setup and he had difficulty to get many of them to see that ‘they’, the clubs were the body corporate of the Association.
He set up a working group with the aim of re-writing the constitution of the Association. After much discussion to define the nature of the Association, its purposes and the responsibilities of clubs for the life and activities of the Association, an amended constitution incorporating those ideas was written and adopted.
Having been elected as County Secretary he began to attend some of the SCAS Council meetings, initially standing in for the Beds County Reps who were unable to attend, but later he was appointed in his own right as the Representative for the County.
In 1994 Chris was selected to shoot as a member of the Bedfordshire County Compound Team that won the SCAS Inter-Counties match and since all the other members of the team have now departed and we have never won the competition again, he may be the sole holder in Beds of a SCAS Inter- Counties Gold medal.
When Lottery Funding started in 1995 he made a successful bid for funds to purchase the equipment required to run world record status tournaments. Once equipped the Association was able to make a decent income from events and maintain its assets.
He was elected SCAS Treasurer in 1995 and held the post continuously until he resigned in 2005. When he was elected the SCAS accounts were in poor shape and he took the next two years to get them into a decent balance and thereafter were continuously in surplus and they were able to able to devote substantial sums to development activities.
He left Clophill in 1997 and became an individual member of GNAS. He thought it would give him more freedom to shoot with more than one club and joined both Hawks and Ouse Valley Archers.
Ouse Valley was a very new club and he helped them to gain experience and confidence in running events. Similarly during his time with Hawks he played a full part in the activities of the club in organising club events and for the County Association.
At this time he was elected by the SCAS Council to be one of its representatives on the GNAS Council and held this post until 1999 when the GNAS setup was re-organised and the Council was replaced by a Board of Directors. In the October of 1997 he was appointed as a Director of GNAS and held the position for three years.
GNAS made a bid to run the European Junior Archery Championships in 1999 and Chris was asked to be the Treasurer for the event. It was a very successful tournament and a surplus was made on a GNAS run international tournament for the first time in ages.
In 1998 the County Treasurer resigned in mid-term and Chris was co-opted to the post for the remainder of the year and at the AGM was elected County Treasurer.
On the Regional and National fronts, in 1998 he was charged with the task of managing the writing of a new Constitution for SCAS which was adopted readily by the SCAS Council. At GNAS he was one of four directors in a working group charged with making recommendations to the Council on the reorganisation of the governance structure; proposals to move the GNAS HQ to Lillishall, and arrangements to manage the appointment of a new Chief Executive. All of the recommendations of the working group were accepted.
Whilst dealing with a very large number of membership transactions that arose in SCAS he recognised that there was very little formal help that they were giving to club and County staff in dealing with GNAS administration. There was a booklet called ‘Notes for Archery Club Secretaries’ but it was written in 1979 and not kept updated. Chris volunteered to re-write this booklet and on February 1st 2001 GNAS published the complete new version of ‘Notes for Archery Club Secretaries’.
In April 2001 he was elected as the GNAS Director for England and served through to 2003.
GNAS hosted the Junior Archery World Championships in 2004 and Chris played a major part in managing the commercial aspects of the event. In April of that year he was awarded a GNAS Gold Plaque for his services to the Society.
At the County AGM in 2004 Chris retired as the County Treasurer and was elected a Life Vice President of BCAA.
In 2005 SCAS awarded him a Gold Badge for Service and elected him as an Honorary Life President of the Society
In 2007 he was elected as President of the County Association and served for one term of three years.
In April 2009 he was awarded Honorary Life Membership of GNAS for services to the Society.
In 2016 Chris agreed to become Hawks Club Chairman but due to his recent diagnosis of Multiple Myeloma he found it limited his shooting and other activities and he decided it was best to resign from the position in 2017, upon which they awarded him Honorary Life Membership.
After such a very distinguished period of helping to shape archery at Club, County, Regional and National levels, Chris’ Life Membership of the County Association is more than deserved and any County would be proud to have him as a member.