The Think Tank

Shannon and I arrived in Las Vegas today for the annual Vegas Shoot, the largest indoor archery tournament in the world. Breaking with tradition we are staying at the host hotel, the South Point Casino and Resort. Since this isn’t he host hotel, we skipped the car rental, which makes the money work about the same as every year.

Mom asked to see a photo of our room, so here it is.

For those of you with smartphones, you can track our progress through the shoot by downloading the The Vegas Shoot app and searching for the name of the archer. Or, for those of you who do not have a smart phone, you can follow the action at this link.

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.

This weekend was the 59th annual Sherwood Nottingham archery match, which is an annual tournament between Sherwood, Oregon and Nottinghamshire, England.  This year was a particular treat because 4 archers from Britain made the trip to the US to shoot with us.  Getting to spend time with them and discuss the differences in how they run their shoot vs. ours was really fun.  2016 will be the anniversary (1956-2016) and us Yanks want to have as many people as possible cross the pond to do the same thing.  Mom, Mo, Shannon and myself are making early plans to head to England in 2016.  It has always been a dream of ours to go over and shoot in both events, and it sounds like we might finally get to make that dream come true.

On a personal note, this years event went well for me.  My Saturday score was 888, which was a little substandard as far as I was concerned, but not completely outside the realm of acceptability.  I wanted to stay at or above an 890 for the weekend, so I wasn’t far off, but I needed to pick it up the second day.  Both of the last two years I missed the tournament record by one point, and I really wanted to get it this year.  Last year I was in great position after the first day but didn’t shoot well enough on Sunday to get it done.  That has bugged me all year.

Sunday I really buckled down and tried to shoot smart.  The wind was gusting a bit, not terribly strong, but it was continually changing directions which made it difficult know how to correct for it.  I finished the first 30 arrows down 5 points at 60 yards, which is a respectable score, and then I shot a perfect 50 yard score.  That was a first for me and it really helped me get on the right side of the numbers for my goal.  40 yards should be easy enough to clean, but I always wind up dropping at least one, and Sunday was no different.  My first arrow at 40 missed to the right.  It felt like a good shot, but the wind had been blowing pretty strong right-to-left on the last two targets at 50, and it reversed and was blowing strongly left-to-right at 40.  I adjusted my sight a little bit before shooting at 40, but apparently not enough.   After that one point I shot pretty well, only dropping 5 X’s the rest of the way.

On top of my own personal outcomes, the Sherwood teams swept in every class where we had enough participants to form a full team: Senior Compound, Master Compound, Junior Recurve, and most importantly, Senior Recurve, which means that the US again gets to keep the silver bowl here in this country for another year.  We’ve held the bowl here since 1996.

On a personal note, I wound up breaking three records:  my own one-day record from last year with an 894 (last year was an 891); the one-day 50 yard record with a perfect 300 (the old record was 298 and had been set by Don Kudlacek a long time ago); and the overall record with a 1782 (the previous record was 1775 and had stood since 2001).

If you are interested, here is some information about the shoot: http://www.robinhoodfestival.org/archery.html

Mom and I bailed out of town just ahead of the snowstorm that has dumped several inches on the Portland area, and headed to Las Vegas for the annual World Archery Festival.

Friday was sort if rough for me. Last week I traded my 2012 dominator for Matt Anderson’s 2013 dominator, and it had been shooting so well the last few days that I decided to shoot it for the first day of the tournament. Unfortunately it’s mojo seems to have worn off: I shot a 297/19x (with an 8 no less). Given that I have been shooting 299-300 with 22-24 x’s pretty consistently this year, the ’97 was disappointing. That was good enough for 90th place, out if about 850+ archers. Also disappointing.

I switched back to the blue bow and practiced for about an hour last night, then mom and I spent the afternoon with our friends Craig and Karen who live just outside Vegas in Henderson.

Today went a little better. I tried to pay special attention to my bow arm today as I was letting my shoulder sag some yesterday, and that proved highly beneficial (as it always does). I dropped my first arrow, which sucked, although I really thought it was a pretty well performed shot, so I couldn’t get too upset about it. After that I rattled off 22 straight X’s, which I think might be a record for me. I got a little nervous and my shoulder was hurting pretty bad the last couple ends, and I dropped three more X’s, but the shots were pretty well executed, so I’m good with that.

I ended the day with with a 299/26x. The X’s were pretty good although the ’99 was a little disappointing. However, as I said, I felt I shot 30 good arrows today, which was what I was aiming for and something I haven’t been able to say for a while. Many of those 30 were about perfect.

Unfortunately being down four points isn’t going to do me any good from a placement perspective and my overall goal of shooting my average score for the weekend is now unattainable. However, there are still some positives to be had:

1. 299/26x is a personal one-day best at Vegas.
2. 22 X’s in a row is a tournament best for me, and may be a personal all-time record.
3. 30 consecutive arrows without an ill-performed shot in a big event is a big step. It’s tempered by the miss as well as the fact that I was effectively out of contention yesterday, but still, it was a goal achieved.
4. Even though I was very disappointed about my shooting on Friday and about the 9 today, I recovered very well and just kept doing my thing. I never got upset or made a fuss or anything. That has been a bugaboo of mine in the past, and both days I handled adversity well.

More to come to Tomorrow.

I’m still tuning up the new Challenger arrows.

I dropped the rest two lines tonight. (It had been at negative 5mm on the tee square prior to that).