March/April Recap 2004

THE FINANCIAL REPORT:

Thank you to my sponsors who sent additional money in the past month. I was able to raise $1300, with a third of it coming from sponsors who increased, and in some cases doubled, their initial sponsorship. I will be making a rather large arrow purchase (+/- $1200) soon and I will need it!!

MARCH/APRIL RECAP:

March was another great volume month, I was able to increase my total arrow count an additional 14%. As for the percentage breakdown, having spent 83% of my time shooting, that left only 3% for time off and about 13% devoted to cardio and yoga.

April is going well, however, the volume initially dropped slightly since there were two major tournaments back to back – the Arizona Cup March 31st-April 4th and the Texas Shootout April 16th-18th. But now they are over, I’m back to my regular routine having upped it slightly to continue to build my confidence and experience.

EXPLAINATION OF AN OUTDOOR TOURNAMENT:

Let me first explain how the outdoor tournaments work since up until now I have only participated in indoor tournaments. This year because it is an Olympic year, the tournaments are run similar to the Olympics. The only distance is 70 meters and the first day is spent shooting 72 arrows – this is called the qualification round. Based on your score (maximum is 10 points per arrow) you are then ranked 1 through 64, if you are 65 or lower you get cut.

The second day is called the OR Round or the Elimination Round. It is basically a bracket that pits the top archers against the weaker archers, i.e. the number one archer has to shoot his/her match against the number 64 archer, while the number 2 archer has to shoot against the number 63 archer. If you win your first match you move on, if you don’t, you’re done. The OR Round is a relatively new format developed for the Olympics in 1996 to make the sport more television friendly, it used to be whoever shot the highest score over four distances would win the gold.

Also, here is the definition of an end, many people weren’t clear what one was in my last E-newsletter – an end is each time you complete a certain number of arrows. For example, in the qualification round we shoot 12 ends of 6 arrows, in the first three elimination rounds we shoot 3 ends of 6 arrows, and in the last three ends of the elimination rounds, we shoot 4 ends of 3 arrows.

ARIZONA CUP 2004:

So, now that you know how it works, I can explain what happened to me at the Arizona Cup. You may recall my last E-newsletter where I stated something to the effect that my main focus in Arizona was my form and I wasn’t going to be concerned with where I placed. Sometimes when you least expect it things turn out better than you could have ever imagined.

Arizona is unique in that it is the first tournament of the year. Because of its status, it attracts quite a few international archers. This year they boasted 13 countries and a record number of entries. Unlike the Olympics, the Arizona Cup held two days of qualification rounds. After the first day, I was in 26th place overall, and I was ranked 15th among Americans. I was pretty proud of how I had shot considering that it was a very windy, hot day and it was only my second major outdoor tournament since I started shooting. Although my score and placement was good, every part of me said I would have a better day the next day.

The next day came and instead of hot, windy weather, we had very cold, rainy weather – for the first time in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and California it was raining at the same time. Instead of being disappointed I was glad… rain meant less wind, and less wind meant I could really show these girls what I could do. My roommate Melissa Stone and I had everything figured out; we’d get to the range nice and early, wear plenty of warm clothes and find a nice dry spot to camp out at so we didn’t get too wet. While everyone else was complaining, we were secretly smiling at each other knowing that we were totally prepared.

We decided to only shoot two of the practice rounds instead of all four, we figured it was better to keep ourselves warm and our equipment dry. In the meantime, my mom had turned into angel of the day and had delivered some tarps and trash bags for us to keep the area around us dry. At the end of our first scoring end they decided to call the tournament for the day. The only end that counted towards our ranking was our first end. Fortunately that moved me from 26th to 23rd.

As my mom reminded me that night, the elimination round is a whole new tournament, it was time to forget about placement and focus on the best way to get through the next day. Larry Skinner, Vic’s coach came up to me right before we shot the OR round and reminded me that this tournament was all about me and my form, nothing else. Glad he reminded me!

My first match was against Lindsay Pian, she was the second place winner in Las Vegas, I was down by 7 at the start of the match, but on the second end I was able to move up a couple of points and then I shot a great last end to win the match. My second match was against Ashley Kamuf who happens to be one of Vic’s (and his sister Sally’s) good friends. I didn’t know what to expect, Ashley is usually a very strong shooter, she has a couple world championships with the compound bow and so I know she is mentally tough. After the first end it was clear though, that all I needed to do was stay strong, shoot good shots and I would win the match. My first two ends of that match, I only lost 11 points, that is less than one point per arrow! I closed the match with a score of 161 to 134, a personal best in a tournament for me and the third highest match of the entire women’s competition.

My third match was against Kathie Loesch, who is a member of this year’s national team along with Ashley. Kathie was also on the 2003 World Championship team. I was able to win that match as well, advancing to the quarter finals where I met Janet Dykman, 1996 and 2000 US Olympic Team member. Janet has been on top in this sport for years. On the first end I was able to grab a 2 point lead, then on the second end, I shot a 3. Where it came from, I will never know… my only consolation was that when I got home, I continued to test that arrow and found that in fact it would constantly shoot low on the target. My biggest mistake against Janet was that I didn’t pull the arrow. The third end went well, I shot a 27, but so did Janet. On the fourth and final end (remember quarter finals to the finals, you shoot 4 three arrow ends) I shot the same arrow again and landed in the 3 ring. Pretty much the match was over. Although I was a little disappointed that I was knocked out, I was more than thrilled to be in 8th place. Never in my life have I ever done so well individually in a sporting event! My mom nearly missed her plane she was so into the matches.

TEXAS SHOOTOUT:

Before I talk about Texas, I would like to THANK Dr. Nancy Leslie and her husband Roger for letting Emma and me stay with them. Les Lilly of the Castle Rock Rotary was able to arrange for us to stay with Nancy and Roger instead of having to stay in a hotel about 30 miles away. They were excellent hosts and I am so thankful to Rotary for its wonderful members.

One of the things I learned at Arizona Cup is that sometimes when you least expect it things will turn out great. For the Texas Shootout, I can only re-phrase that to sometimes when you lease expect it, things turn out like crap. BUT THERE IS ALWAYS A REASON!! Now, almost a week removed from Texas, I realize that it was not the end of the world and that it has no bearing on who is on the US Olympic Team…

I arrived in Texas ready to rumble. I think I figured that since I did so well in Arizona there was no stopping me. I somehow forgot that I felt completely different in Arizona, all I cared about there was getting through the weekend without embarrassing myself and sticking to my form. I would have done well to heed the lessons of the past.

The practice round went great, every arrow I shot made its way to the yellow center of the target. It was only when the real tournament started the next day that I suddenly was timid and scared of the wind. Let’s just put it this way, the wind was averaging at least 20 mph, with gusts up to 35 mph. My first arrow hit the target, my second one didn’t. It was going to be a long day.

I finished off the qualification round with a 270 and a 290 for a total of 560, only a few points off my qualification score from Arizona, putting me in 18th place. Even though I was less than thrilled with my 270, I was excited about another personal best in a tournament of 290. Unfortunately, I was a little too concerned with the score and not concerned enough with how I was going to deal with the elimination rounds the next day.

My first match in the OR was against Lieren Hackbarth, I was able to win that easily with a 148 to 126. The wind was tough but I was able to manage it. Then came my second match. I was up against Nicole Rasor, this years Las Vegas Champion. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, Nicole and I were exactly the same going into the match. She was ranked 15th and I was ranked 18th. Her last match she shot a 148, my last match I shot a 148. I misread the wind and my first shot hit the 4 ring. It took me another 5 arrows to make my way into the gold, by that point I had lost nearly 24 points in one end alone. I was going to be strong though, I shot the next end really well and even managed to eek out a few 10s. My last end however did me in pretty quickly… I started telling myself I needed to shoot a near perfect end to win the match. I’ve learned since that thinking that way was one of the main reasons I lost.

Unfortunately sometimes we have to learn lessons the hard way, hopefully that was one of the hardest ones I’ll have to learn this season, I try not to make too many mistakes twice. Thanks for reading. I apologize for the length!

Joy

Mark 10:27

p.s. Vic and I went on two mini trips around Florida. One was to the Keys for a two day break from shooting, I’ve included some of those pictures in the new Pixagogo gallery if you are interested. We got to see sunken treasure that was recovered by Mel Fisher at the Mel Fisher Museum, we ate sloppy joes at none other than Sloppy Joe’s, and we got to feed the HUGE tarpon at Robbie’s just before traveling over the famous 7-mile bridge. The second trip was to Naples, on the west coast of Florida, Vic and I went to visit some new friends. While he was out fishing, I was able to catch some great beach time.