The Think Tank

A good weekend for me and Deb!

This weekend Debbie and I shot in the first two legs of the Northwest Shoot Up Tour, a series of ten shoots at different shops all around Oregon and Washington.  In order to qualify for the Finals at the end of January in Camas, you have to shoot in at least three of the qualifying legs. Its the first time that either of us have shot in this tour, but it is quickly becoming one of my favorite events of the year.

Here is the format:  Each of the qualifying legs are one day shoots, consisting of a 300 Vegas round followed by a shoot off.  After the 300, everyone is grouped into Flights.  The two lowest ranking people in the Flight shoot a 6 arrow head-to-head shoot-off against each other, and the winner of that match moves on to shoot against the next highest person, and so on until you get all the way up to first place.  The top three spots in each Flight win money.

For the Final, they will count the three best scores from the preceding legs, then resort everyone into Flights using those numbers and proceed through the Shoot-Off in the same format.

I will go into more detail after the bump, but for those of you who want the skinny without having to read all the way through, here is the Condensed Version:  On Saturday, Debbie won the Third Flight, and I came in 5th in the First Flight; On Sunday, Debbie moved up about ten places to finish 4th in the Second Flight, and I won the First Flight, marking my first Indoor victory since I started shooting again.

I think this is my favorite format for a tournament because, unlike a standard seeding format (where the guy in first can blow everyone out of the water, then have a bad first elimination round and be done), in this setup the qualifying round counts for a lot. You can’t drop farther than one place, so if you wind up in first after the qualifying round, the worst you can do is second.  On the other hand, if you wind up in last, you can still work your way all the way to the top – although you will have to shoot through a lot of people to do it.

This weekend saw the first two legs of the Tour.  The first one was at Archery World in Vancouver, and the second was at Archers Afield in Tigard.  Debbie and I shot in both events, in the Flights Division.   (There was also a Championship Division, which is basically the Pro Division.  You pay extra money to shoot, and the payouts are bigger).

I started out a little shaky on Saturday for my first 10 arrows or so: I dropped a lot of X’s and 4 points pretty quick, culminating in a 27 – the worst end I’ve shot in a very long time.  That ticked me off and got me back on track.  After that I shot quite well for the rest of the day, finishing with a 296 – out of 300 – and 18 X’s – out of 30.  (For the sake of reference, the X ring is the size of a dime.)  I don’t like to go lower than 20 X’s per round, but given that I had dropped 7 in my first few arrows, I figured 18 wasn’t too bad.

In contrast, Debbie started quite well – especially considering that she has only shot about 20 arrows since February!  However, at the half-way mark tragedy struck: she was getting ready to shoot her first arrow of the 6th end when she noticed that several strands of her string were broken.  That’s bad news.  Complicating things further, she was shooting her favorite bow, which happens to be from around 1998, so finding cables and strings seemed unlikely.  Still, she checked with the guys at the shop, and they managed to find some factory strings from another manufacturer that were the correct size… AND they managed to get them put on in the 30 minutes allowed for equipment failures.  The rest of us were just finishing up when they got her bow back together, so she had to shoot her 15 make up arrows on an empty range, which can be very disconcerting because it feels like everyone is watching you.  Which they are.

She shot very well and finished up with a 286, earning her 1st place in the Third Flight and guaranteeing that she would be in the money.  I came in 4th in the First Flight, meaning I would have to win at least two of my Elimination Rounds in order to advance into the money.

We took an hour break and started shooting eliminations.  I was pretty nervous and feeling concerned about the elimination, and by the time I got through my practice arrows and was facing off against Darren Thornton, I was shaking like a leaf on a tree.  I haven’t shot in a real shoot-off against a quality opponent in about ten years, and both times this year that I have been in eliminations, I lost.  That didn’t fill me with confidence.  I struggled through some less-than-stellar shots, shooting only one legitimately well executed arrow and lost by three points. Having failed to defend my position, I finished 5th on the day.

Debbie calmly walked up to the line a few minutes later and laid down 6 nice arrows to win her round, her Flight and $130 dollars.  After deducting her entry fee and the $85 dollars worth of cables and strings, she still wound up in the black, which is a pretty sweet deal!  We were all very proud of her!

I had been thinking about getting some different arrows after having tried a friends earlier in the week, which are larger in diameter then the ones I’ve been shooting and would have earned me a couple of extra points by virtue of their size (all things being equal), which would have put me in first instead of fourth.  I had checked at a couple of the local shops and struck out, and had been planning on having to order them online, but Archery World had a dozen of ’em.  I bought them before we left and decided to fletch them up and shoot them in the morning.

On Sunday Mom cooked up a great breakfast before we set out for Archers Afield in Tigard.  We left earlier than Saturday because I wanted to get at least a few arrows in before we started scoring so I could make sure they were flying well.  Everything seemed good to go, so I decided to shoot my new Gold Tips.

Debbie’s cables were stretching a little bit and felt a tad too long for her taste, but she was reluctant to have them take her bow apart before she started shooting, so she decided just to gut it out.

The first half went pretty well for both of us.  My new arrows were shooting pretty darn well, although I kept hitting a little high on my second target.  The shots felt good, but they literally were hitting the same hole at the top of the 10 ring, costing me X’s.  Debbie was shooting well too, not dropping any points through the first five ends.

The second half was a different story.  I shot a couple of less-than-perfect shots which dropped out, and one of the high arrows on #2 slipped a bit higher than the rest and lost another one.  I finished up with a 297 and 18 X’s, one point better than yesterday.  The score wasn’t any thing special, but I felt like I actually shooting better.

Debbie was likewise struggling on the second half, but she wound up shooting four points better than Saturday, ending with a 290.  When all was said and done, she wound up 5th in the Second Flight (about 10 spots higher than the previous day) and I wound up 2nd in the First Flight.

The eliminations started about an hour later.  Debbie shot great in her first two eliminations, coolly dispatching two archers and moving up one position.  Her third round started out great when she took a one point lead, but then the nerves set in a little bit on her last three arrows, and she wound up losing.  She felt she could have won that round, and as such was a little disappointed, but I thought she shot exceptionally well and Mom and I were both very proud of her. Especially when you consider that she has hardly practiced this whole year AND her bow broke!  That’s damn fine shooting.

Going into the eliminations I was feeling much more confident than I had been on Saturday.  The new arrows were shooting very well and I knew as long as I just shot my form I would hit X’s.  That’s where I tried to keep my focus, on just shooting for form.  The arrows were gonna land wherever they landed, but I had no intention of going out because of poor shots like I had the day before.

My first opponent was Chuck Bakies, a fellow I had never met before.  I shot six really good shots, scoring a 60 and 5 X’s,  winning by two points.  Next up was Jim Valencort, a good friend of mine whom I have known just about since I started shooting.  It was really fun to get to shoot against him.

I was nervous and had to let down several shots because I lost track of my thoughts for a second.  Letting down and starting over is one of the hardest things to do.  You always think you can pull it out, and staying on top of things enough to know when to get out of a bad shot is a lesson I constantly struggle to learn.  Today I did a very good job of letting down, recentering and shooting a good shot when I needed it.  My third arrow on the first end was the only one of the bunch that I thought was less than perfect, and it was pretty good and caught an X on the left side.  I finished with a 60 and 5 X’s again, securing 1st place and $120 dollars!  (The prizes were a bit smaller on Sunday because there were a couple fewer people).

That paid for my entry fee for both days and left me $50 bucks to the good.  I count that as a good weekend!