About us

PAT'S HISTORY

Patrick Coghlan grew up in Adelaide, South Australia.  He was originally introduced to archery as a 7 year old boy, at Southern Vales Archery Club.  At first his father wouldn’t let him shoot arrows with points, so every shot bounced off the target. When he progressed to arrows that would “stick”, his main ambition was to robin hood his father’s arrows. Eventually he progressed to larger goals, by winning the Tyro Tournament later that year. He was also fortunate enough to be coached by Ros Johns when he was this age (Olympic Gold Medalist, Simon Fairweathers’ original coach too).

During his youth Patrick gave up Archery and pursued other sports participating in Australian Rules Football, State Rugby, Athletics, Indoor Cricket & Outdoor Cricket, Tennis, Surf Life Saving, Rowing, Triathlons, Tae Kwon Do, Weight lifting etc.

Fortunately for Archery, but not so much for Patrick, in 1999 he was in a serious fall during an Army Reserves exercise and permanently injured his spine. He had to give away most of his pursuits and spent some time re-finding the right hobby for his new way of life. After playing with table tennis, model painting, slot car racing and pistol shooting, he felt life just wasn’t worth it if he couldn’t participate in a real, challenging and competitive sport.

Pat dug out his old hunting bow in late 2003, which he hadn’t shot in over 10 years, and headed to the local archery club. With-in weeks, he had beaten all the other competitors at the club. With-in a year he had cleaned up the State Championships and with-in two he had become the National Target Champion. Within 2 years he was representing Australia and had been part of the Australian Team which won a Silver Medal in Madrid 2005.

Pat continues to break all the state records in 95% of the events. Pat also holds a number of National Records.

The highlight of Pat’s career was winning in World Cup 4 Boe France in 2008 and also scoring 1404 in the Canberra Australia Day Fita Star.

Patrick is married to Rachel and together they have a son, Scout.