Quick Version:
3/31-4/3 - TEXAS SHOOTOUT: 1st place finish in the team round with team members Angela Teggart and Nikki Stull. 3rd place finish individually, my highest outdoor finish yet. Read on...
4/4-4/7 - FARGO/WINNIPEG: After the Texas Shootout, Joe Courneya arranged for me to fly out to Fargo, ND and Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada) to talk to students and physical education teachers about why archery should be in schools. Read on...
4/13-4/15 – ARIZONA CUP: Team PSE (Jenny and Mandy Nichols and myself) finished up 1st beating the team from Poland in the final. Individually, I finished in 9th place. Read on...
NEW SPONSORS: Brunton, Easton Arrows, Doinker, and 4 new personal sponsors.Read on...
UPCOMING EVENTS: 2005 World Outdoor Trials – May 10th-15th in Orlando, FL.Read on... Results should be posted on www.usarchery.org.
Long Version
3/31-4/3 - TEXAS SHOOTOUT:
Ever had the feeling that you weren’t prepared to do something, but that you had to do it anyway – no matter the outcome? That was how I felt going into Texas. I went in part because I had already scratched from three major indoor tournaments and I was itching to compete again. I think the other half of me just wanted to get the first outdoor tournament out of the way, get the jitters out. If archery has taught me anything, it is that I have to be patient and trust that the outcome will be in God’s hands, good or bad, and not in mine. That being said, I still have to show up at every tournament as prepared as I can be and not be scared to do well or even to flop.
Probably the best part about the trip was getting to stay with Drs. Nancy Leslie and Roger Smith for the second year in a row. Last year, one of my Rotary sponsors, Les Lilly helped me get connected with them. It was a lot of fun to hang out with them again and spend some one on one time with Roger’s mom, Sue – who by the way makes an excellent casserole. While I was there, Nancy had me try a computer program that uses virtual reality and body signs such as your heart rate and your breathing to lift balls into the air, build staircases, and even shoot an arrow.
I arrived in Texas a day early. I learned last year that flying in on the practice day can be dangerous if the weather is bad or if your bow doesn’t arrive. An extra day always gives you a cushion in case anything dramatic happens. It also helps get over the plane sickness you get after flying on the puddle jumper from Houston to College Station, something which I inevitably suffer from every time.
I went to the practice range to sign in and shoot a couple rounds of arrows only to find out that the wind was steadily blowing at around 20 miles per hour, with gusts up to 30 mph. At that point, I only had 8 arrows to compete with (you get 6) and I was afraid that if I lost anymore I’d be in trouble. That night I stocked up on my traditional balance bars and orange juice and headed off to bed not knowing what the next day would bring.
If you have been following my E-newsletters, you will know that one of the most important things that I stress is that success comes not without failure (or at least some dips along the way). The first day of the tournament was one of those days that I wished that saying wasn’t true. I shot terribly, so terribly in fact that I missed my last arrow at 50 meters out of pure frustration.
My frustration that had been building all morning exploded after the miss. I had promised myself that outcome didn’t matter, yet I wanted to do so well. I had told myself that I didn’t care about score, only about form, yet I felt like a total fish out of water. My form felt awful, my attitude was terrible and it seemed as though nothing I did would help. Fortunately for me, Kate Anderson (2005 US Indoor National Champion) and Stephanie Arnold (2004 Olympian) both came up to me and were very consoling. They didn’t have to be nice, after all they were my competitors, but they were true sportswomen.
After a rough day, I had an option to call it a day or stay another hour and shoot in the team round. I decided I needed to get rid of some of the cob webs and put a team together. We called ourselves stealth and despite having never practiced together, we managed to beat three varsity teams to win the gold.
Although the team round win was a very positive experience, my individual shooting had still shot a hole in my confidence. That night I had to make a decision about my attitude, I needed to change it around somehow. I needed to enjoy the tournament and not dread it. I went to Target to buy a cheapo watch because I didn’t have one that was functioning and while I was there, I happened to see a pair of Superwoman underwear. I figured that the tournament couldn’t get much worse, so I was going to have fun the next day knowing that I was the only woman out there wearing hot pink superwoman underwear.
The decision must have been a good one because the next day was a totally new day – and it went really well. My first match was against one of the Texas A&M aggies who had just started shooting archery and my second match was against Angela Taggert, one of my teammates from the team round the night before. Although I got through my first match pretty easily, it was the start of the second match that was a little more challenging. At the end of the first end against Angela, I only had one or two points up on her. I really had to dig deep to open up the point spread on the second end. It can always be a bit more challenging to beat a friend than someone you know, but I wasn’t about to go out in the second round – I had no desire to repeat last year’s 30th place finish when I freaked out against Nicole Rasor.
My next match was against Stephanie Miller from Columbia University. Stephanie, as you may recall from Gold Cup 2004, was on the 2003 gold medal Pan American Team as well as the team the US sent to the world championships in 2003. She is ranked 2nd in the US and was seeded 1st after the qualification round. I was excited, yet calm at the same time. I love that feeling right before you go into a really tough match and your heart starts beating. I love steep competition and challenging my mind to think clearly and my body to react smoothly. Despite some wind, I managed to win with a couple points to spare and for the first time in any national-level competition, I managed to make the top 4 cut.
Once you make the top four you still have to win your next match in order to go into the gold medal match. My semi-final match was against Lindsay Carmichael, a member of the 2004 Paralympic team who set several world records in Athens this past summer. I wasn’t necessarily nervous about shooting against her, I had beat her team in the team round the night before, but I think I was a little too focused on shooting perfectly so that I could shoot for the gold. You may know exactly what I’m talking about… it is like taking a test and trying so hard to remember everything that your mind goes blank and you can’t even begin to think about what the right answer is or how to solve it. Basically in archery, your body just shuts down and you can’t remember what you are supposed to be doing to make the arrow go in the middle. My very first arrow was a miss. The match was over before it even got started. It is nearly impossible to come back in a 12 arrow match with a miss. My destiny for this tournament was not a gold medal.
I entered the bronze medal match with mixed emotions. I knew I was good enough to be in the gold medal match but there was no point in dwelling on that, it would only cause me to loose my focus on the task at hand which was to do the best job I could do to give myself the best chance at winning the bronze. My opponent was 2004 Olympian Stephanie Arnold. Stephanie had been so nice to me when I was struggling the day before and here I was, finding myself shooting against her for the 3rd place spot. After the first end, I was up a few points and by the half, I was up enough that she couldn’t come back and win. I remember thinking, Wow! finally my first medal finish in any major outdoor tournament! Of course sharing the moment with my hosts who had seen me go home extremely disappointed the year before was on of the best parts. The first person to congratulate me was the gal handing out the awards, the second was the US Anti-doping agency escort.
The dope testing was quite the process. You have to be followed around until you are ready to go to the bathroom. Once you are ready to go, they escort you to the testing area where they ask you pee in a cup in front of someone. I was a little nervous about the testing because I had just started on a new vitamin regimen and USADA (US Anti-doping agency) won’t tell you what vitamins you can or can’t take. Fortunately, I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t cause any problems because I was assured by my nutritionist, Dr. Smith that the vitamins were made out of whole foods. Still, you never know and I was very happy when I received a letter on the 25th saying that I had passed the doping test.
In the end, I think I was a bit relieved that I had finished 3rd despite feeling totally unprepared. It taught me a lot about my inner strength and my ability to turn a bad start to a tournament around.
4/4-4/7 - FARGO/WINNIPEG:
In between the Texas Shootout and the Arizona Cup, I flew to Fargo, ND and Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada) thanks to a lot of hard work on the part of Joe Courneya, the 4-H director for North Dakota. In Fargo, I spoke briefly in front of a JOAD (Junior Olympic Archery Development) program that was just getting started. I then gave a demonstration, hitting balloons first and then an apple and then strawberries. After the shooting, I signed autographed cards provided by PSE.
For many of the kids in attendance at the meet and greet, it was their first time shooting and their enthusiasm was extremely inviting. The amazing thing about the program is that it wouldn’t even exist if a guy named “Rags” didn’t offer to volunteer and Joe Courneya hadn’t put it together. I am always encouraged to see such willing volunteers.
The next morning Joe arranged for me to film a public service announcement that will air on television promoting 4-H shooting sports and local JOAD programs in North Dakota and the surrounding states with the possibility of being aired on a national level.
After shooting the psa, we went to Centennial grade school. Before meeting with the students, I had an opportunity to speak with physical education teachers from several different school districts about the benefits of the NASP (National Archery in the Schools Program). I also learned a lot about the statistical impact of archery in schools. Did you know that attendance goes up on days that students participate in archery? Or that discipline issues are lower on archery days? The main thing I talked about was how archery can be used as a character building tool as well as a platform to teach math and physics, and finally as a sport that increases agility and ear/body coordination (i.e. getting your body to do what you are asking it to do).
Although speaking with the teachers was important and I enjoyed it very much, it was being around the 5th graders that really made my day. Many of them had never seen a bow before let alone shot at a target with one. I had a blast talking to them about encouraging their fellow students and really enjoyed getting them riled up. I asked them to yell “you can do it!” and they were all over it, the noise in the room was deafening! The best part though was when their fellow classmates came up to shoot and you could hear them continue to yell and cheer on their friends whether they hit the gold or not. Afterwards, I stuck around to sign more PSE autograph cards which the kids really loved.
The Fargo Forum wrote a really nice article about the event, click the link below to read it and see a fantastic picture of one of the young girls shooting her arrow with me cheering right next to her:
The Fargo trip didn’t end with the school visit. A friend of Joe’s, Delmere, contacted Joe and I to see if we would be interested in making a home visit to a local archer. Having spoken with Joe a little bit about Chick, I knew that she was disabled but had no idea what a champion she really was until we arrived at her home. You see, Chick has practically the same injury as Christopher Reeve had and she is confined permanently not only to her wheelchair, but to her home. Because of state laws, she is not aloud to leave her house, let alone her state.
Before Chick was injured she was a 4-H volunteer teaching archery and an active archer herself as well. After her car accident 9 years ago this July, it was a miracle that she even lived let alone started shooting archery again. With the help of Al from Scheels All Sports in Fargo, they were able to develop a PSE crossbow that aims with a laser and that she shoots with a button she presses with her cheek. This amazing woman continues to press on and has not only continued to do something that she loves but has come up with other ways to occupy her time. One way of doing this was to write a cookbook using computer equipment specialized to her. Soon, you will be able to purchase Chick’s cookbook from my website for just $12 and 100% of the profits will go to help fund a nursing scholarship that she set up to honor the student nurse who saved her life. I will send a link in the next e-newsletter.
My trip in Fargo was then followed by a four hour drive to Winnipeg. I have only been to Canada twice before, once for a rowing trip to Toronto and a second time to visit a friend in Montreal. I was very excited to have the opportunity to visit a more western part of Canada. In the process, I learned an extensive amount about the Red River and the problems that are currently being caused by its overflow into Canada. My purpose for being at the water conference was to speak to high school students about making their dreams become a reality and I did my best to do that. I also learned that a few of them had dreams of their own… one student wanted to change the snowboarding world another wanted to run her own nightclub business… and yet another wanted to be the left arm wrestling champion of the world.
Overall the trip was a fantastic opportunity for me to encourage the growth of archery and learn a lot at the same time. I only hope that opportunities like these will continue to exist. If you know of any club or team or corporation that would be interested in having me speak to them, I would be more than happy to do this again.
4/13-4/15 – ARIZONA CUP:
After coming back from Winnipeg, I started shooting again and things seemed to be going from bad to worse in practice. I was just getting over a cold and a muscle in my back had been acting up. Part of me started putting a lot of pressure on myself to do well and during my last practice before the tournament my coach and I had a long discussion about whether or not I should even attend. I shot one more end, nearly all of my arrows hitting the blue ring and decided to throw in the towel on the tournament.
When I got home, I called my mom to ask her if I could come out and stay with her for the weekend instead of shooting the tournament. She said I could if I really wanted to, but she helped me to talk through why I really wanted to scratch the tournament. In reality, one of the main reasons I didn’t want to go was that I was afraid I would flop. The only way I was going to get through the tournament was if I thought that the most important thing was not how I did, but that I participated and didn’t give up. So with that, I packed my bags and drove to Phoenix.
I had a better first two days than Texas and was able to build up my confidence a little bit. My first match in the elimination round was against a gal from Pima community College who, like the girl in my first match in Texas, had just started shooting archery. I won easily by over 100 points. My second match was a little more difficult, I had to shoot against a friend that I train with in Tucson, Maggie Huff. Maggie was a member of the 2004 Junior World’s team and was a JR national champion last year. At the end of the first end, I was down by 5 points. Even though I really like and respect Maggie, my brain kicked in and pushed me into the zone. The next end, I shot nearly every arrow in the gold and not only reclaimed my deficit, but pushed ahead by about 6 points. On the last end we both shot the same score and I moved on to the quarter finals where I had to shoot against Marie-Pierre Beaudet.
Marie and I had shot against each other the previous year during the 1/16th round at the Gold Cup in New Jersey. There, I managed to beat her and finish 5th overall after losing to Stephanie Miller in the quarter finals. I knew I was capable of beating her, but that my focus had to be on my form. At this point, my form still didn’t feel right and so finding my confidence in that was a bit more difficult. During the previous match I was able to sight in (meaning move my sight) despite the wind but at the start of this match, the wind had picked up strongly in a different direction. I adjusted my sight the way I thought I needed to and then shot the first arrow. It was a low 6. I didn’t know whether it was me or the wind, and seeing as how I had just changed my sight I figured it must have been me, so I shot another one and it too hit a low blue. I knew that Marie-Pierre wouldn’t give me much breathing room and that those first two arrows would be tough to recover from. I calmed myself down and tried to focus on form and adjusted my sight one more time. I shot a low 7. 11 points dropped on the first 3 arrows. I couldn’t believe it. On the next end, I just went for it, I shot quickly, I shot strong and I barely missed the gold – probably because I wasn’t focused on it.
As we started the last end, I shot pretty well, my form, still not feeling very comfortable came through for me. In the end, I lost the match by 6 points but cut my deficit in half. Despite not winning, I shot the highest losing score and finished 9th. This tournament taught me a lot about the importance of participation. As Tiger Woods said before this years masters when questioned about why he went to all the other majors when he was struggling with his form, “If you don’t go, you don’t have a shot, if you go, at least you have a chance.”
In the end, even though both the Texas Shootout and the Arizona Cup were very stressful and at some points frustrating, they were excellent preparation for the Olympic Trials to be held in a little less than 3 years from now. Thanks sponsors for helping make these tournaments a huge success!!
NEW SPONSORS:
The past two months have been very exciting. Brunton made me a member of it’s national staff, providing me with top of the line optics equipment (www.brunton.com). Doinker has set me up with new stabilizers and accessories just in time for the 2005 World Outdoor Trials (www.doinker.com). Easton provided me with 2 sets of X-10 arrows (www.eastonarchery.com). New personal sponsors include Paul Roden from Homestead Ag Products (Bronze), Paul Smith (Silver - who I made a web site for: www.hocawards.com), Joe Courneya (Gold), and my mom (Platinum).
UPCOMING EVENTS:
2005 World Outdoor Trials – May 10th-15th in Orlando, FL. Results should be posted on www.usarchery.org.
