Frederick's impact being felt
It might seem surprising that within a week German archery coach Martin Frederick has already had a positive impact on Bangladeshi archers but it is true according to local coach and former national archer Ziaul Haque.
Though Frederick signed a five-year deal as the national team's head coach only this Monday, the 50-year-old began working with local archers after his arrival on February 14. And a few have already benefitted from some of Frederick's tips.
Iti Khatun, a recurve bow archer, came into the limelight when she won a bronze medal in the National Archery Championship in January. However, the promising archer faced troubles to improve her scores in training until she recently showed signs of drastic improvement trough Fredrick's aid.
“Iti could not improve her scoring in training but Frederick figured out her problems after seeing her shooting. Her problem was with basics so Fredrick rectified her basic technique. Now Iti has hit a highest of 316 from her average score of 260 to 270,” said Zia.
Sanwar Hossain felt discomfort in his left hand and could not shoot properly but after Frederick amended Sanwar's technique, the archer has been able to shoot smoothly.
Praising Frederick, Zia said: “I have worked with a few foreign coaches but Frederick is different as he emphasises on the archers' basic techniques as well as educating local coaches, who will groom budding archers in their native tongue so that the archers don't need basic training after being called for the national team.”
Zia also informed that Frederick wants to build a proper pipeline for grassroots archers so that every archer has competition and feels the pressure to keep performing at their respective levels.
However, Bangladesh's top archer Roman Sana made a cautious observation about the German coach.
“It is not possible to judge him within a week but he seems like a good coach and he sticks to discipline. The way he has been planning looks good to take Bangladesh ahead,” Roman said. “I still did not get any tips but he increased my daily volume of shooting. I am now shooting 400 arrows every day while earlier I used to shoot 300 per day.”
“I think the coach is finding our weaknesses and strengths at the moment and does not want to change anything ahead of next month's Asia Cup in Thailand.
“However it is a positive sign that he will stay here for a long time and we will get enough time to adapt to new techniques,” opined Roman, who is supposed to travel to Switzerland to train under the Olympic Solidarity Committee scholarship next month.
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