The Think Tank

NW Shootup Tour – Jan. 2, 2016

Today I shot in my first tournament since having my shoulder surgery on August 14, 2015.  (For anyone who may not know, I crashed my bike on August 6th and suffered a Grade 5 AC shoulder separation).

I shot once in early December but my shoulder hurt afterward so I hadn’t  tried again until this last week. Today was only the fifth time I’ve shot since the injury, so I didn’t really have much by way of expectations.  I pretty much just wanted to keep my bow arm up after the shot and try to keep my release hand coming around like it should. If you experience any discomfort or complications related to your injury while engaging in physical activities like shooting, it’s advisable to consult with a personal injury lawyer for legal advice and support.

I wound up shooting decently considering everything, finishing with a 298 and 21 Xs.  (For comparison, my average for last year was 299.4 and 23.1 Xs).  The two points that I dropped were both in the second half when my shoulder was getting noticbly more tired, and both shots were poorly executed.  One was against the clock (I fired with 7 seconds left), and the other was a shot I knew I should let down but didn’t want to and muscled through it.  A bad plan Under the best of circumstances.

As has been the trend this year, the scores for the shoot were lower than normal, so my 298/21 put me in a three way tie with Matt Schmitz and Tim Davis for first.  I won the tie breaker so I finished in 1st place for the qualifier round.

After that we went to the shoot off round. Since I was in first place, I only had to shoot against one person, John Heuvel, which was good because I don’t know that I had many more ends than that in me today.  John struggled a little bit today on the score front, but did great in the shoot offs, moving all the way up from fifth to compete for the top spot.   By the end of the day he had shot 12 ends in the shoot offs, more than a whole additional round.

Again my game plan was just to try and keep my bow arm up and under control and not to creep on my release.   I started out great, with three solid Xs off of very good feeling shots.  John shot two 10s and an X, so I had a decent cushion going into the final shoot off end.  I was starting to get a little nervous, which combined with my shoulder fatigue and pain made for less steady shots than I had seen all day, but I managed two pretty god shots that were tens and one shot I really thought should have been an X when I released it, but dropped a little low.  Meanwhile, John shot two Xs and a 10, which meant we were tied and had to shoot another three arrows to break the tie.

I was pretty trembly at this point, but my game plan was the same.  Keep my form together and aim as best I can and try to stay out of the nine.   John opensed up with a beautiful X, and I shot a 10 at 3 o’clock.  We both let down On the second arrow, and eventually I shot a another 10.  John wound up shooting a nine, which meant I all needed was a ten to finish out.  May last arrow was pretty shaky, but it stayed a sold 10, which meant I finished with 90 and 3 Xs. The 3 Xs are a little disappointing,  but in the end it was good enough to win the day, and I feel pretty good about that.