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 the injury worsens or was exacerbated by shooting, consulting medical malpractice lawyers may provide insight into legal options. When 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. Injured in New York? Call a New York personal injury lawyer from Cellino Law.

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.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/150491769[/vimeo]2015 has come and gone.  We ushered in 2016 with a small party of great friends: John and Julia Heuvel, Dave and Reggie Nelson and Jim and Donna Thurlow.  It was a small party but that just meant that we had more time to spend with our friends, which is always nice.  It was an excellent party and a great way to ring in the New Year and I’m grateful to everyone who came and shared it with us.

As always, we did our annual fireworks display.  The timing was a little off, as the fuse on the cake-side of the board seemed to burn much faster than the mortars, but it was still a fun display.  I’m testing out a theory on how to keep the timing more in sync today.  Hopefully we can get it all worked out in time for Fourth of July fireworks in the summer.

For Christmas I got a shiny new Nikon D7100 DSLR, and I used that to film the fireworks display.  I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that everyone reading this post has a happy, healthy and successful 2016!

Mom and I are on our way back from Vegas.  As I write this we are passing through Boise.  (Technology is pretty cool these days).

The third and final day went pretty well for me.  I shot a 299/22X which is exactly dead-on my statistical average for the year, so I can’t be too upset.  I would have liked to shoot a 300 of course, but I made a cardinal mistake on one shot, and that’s what happens.  That gave me a total of 896/58X out of a possible 900/90X.  That’s a tad below my average, thanks to the 298 on the first day and the lousy X count on Saturday, but all in all its in the range of normal, so I’m pretty satisfied.

I improved a fair amount over last year’s performance, both in terms of score and placement.  Last year I shot an 894 and 60-some X’s, and finished 12 in the Second Flight – which translated to around 49th overall as I recall.  This year I improved my position each day.  After Friday I was 35th, after Saturday I was 27th, and I finished 16th overall (out of 875 competitors in my division).  I joked that if I had a couple more days, I could win the thing!

Unfortunately that was not good enough to finish in the money.  Only the top 8 archers in each Flight won prizes.  I guess that’s why there is always next year.

Here are some interesting stats about the tournament:

• 2,520 archers took part in this years event.
• Of those, 427 came from foreign lands, representing 39 countries.
• Each of the 50 US States plus American Samoa were represented by at least one archer.
• California and Arizona contributed the largest of number of archers, at 422 and 206 respectively.  58 archers from Oregon made the trek, while 86 Washingtonians were in attendance.
• More than $216,000 dollars in prize money was awarded across all of the various divisions, plus an additional $24,000 dollars in scholarships were awarded to the winners of the junior divisions.

Yesterday was sort of a mixed bag for me.  I shot a 299, which was better, but the arrow that missed was a mystery.  I shot two shots that I didn’t like much, both of which caught, and then the one that missed was a total surprise.  It aimed well, felt good, and just hit a long way low.  Still, a 299 is better than the 298 I shot yesterday.  Additionally, I had a very difficult time catching X’s… everything was just a little bit out.  I wound up shooting 15 x’s, well off my average of 22.

That gave me a 597/36x for the first two days, which was good enough for 27th (out of 875 total archers in my division) and First Flight, both of which are better than last year.  So that’s good.  Unfortunately it puts me right at the bottom of First Flight, which makes it unlikely I will get into the money this year, of course I can always bet in Las Vegas or make money in the bitcoin decode website which is a great option as well.  That’s a bummer, but I am ultimately happy with my performance so far.  It’s not as good as I wanted to do, just slightly less than I expected, so all-in-all it’s been pretty good.

My third and final round is today at 9:30.  Teko is shooting at 7am today, and since we are riding together, that means we are up again at O’Dark Thirty to get over to the range in time to eat breakfast.  I may even shoot a few practice arrows before my round today!

I will post updates when I get finished later this morning.

PS: Here’s a link to the final scores from yesterday.  I am shooting in Freestyle Unlimited Flights.  ianseo.net/TourData/2015/989/IC.php

I’m just about to leave for the shooting range, so I will update more later.  But in the mean time, here is a link where you can see the scores so far.  I believe that this updates in near real-time as they are doing electronic scoring here.  http://ianseo.net/TourData/2015/989/IC.php

After yesterday, I am in 35th out of 875 participants in my division.  I am shooting in Freestyle Unlimited Flights.