The Think Tank

Mom and I came up to Seattle last night so I could shoot in a club-hosted STAR FITA event this weekend, which is just a fancy way to say that this tournament meets all of the qualifications of a US Archery Association shoot, and therefore any score shot at this eventcounts towards team qualifications and national and/or world records.

Sadly, I do not have to worry about breaking any national or world records this weekend.  Today stunk to high heaven.  I experimented with an adjustment to my rest yesterday, actually making the arrow tune out as it should instead of relying on group-tuning, which is to say adjusting things until it seems to group well despite the arrow being all catiwhompass on the bow.  It seemed to be working alright yesterday afternoon, but today was a whole different story.

Sadly still, I can’t blame it all on that.  I shot pretty badly on top of everything, not holding well, executing poorly and eventually I got very frustrated and had a hard time even thinking straight, much less shooting straight.

I shot a 1335 today, which is 105 points off perfect. It wasn’t the worst score I’ve ever shot, but it was definitely among the worst I can remember.   (To give some contrast, National Champions are shooting right around 1400, and you can probably make the US Archery Team if you stay in the 1380’s.  Decent guys at the state level shoot around the 1360’s.  I expected to shoot around 1350-1360 and I sailed smoothly under that bar without even rustling my hair.)

They didn’t get around to posting the scores by the time I left, so I don’t know for sure, but the only guy I saw who was scoring worse than me was the poor fellow who lost an arrow early in the morning and only had five arrows left to shoot… which is problematic, since you are actually supposed to shoot six arrows at a time.

Oh well.

Seems like every post I’ve made about a tournament since my return to archery has been pretty much just like this one: not the worst I’ve ever done, but very far below where I think I should be at this stage, which in turn is along way under where I was.  This one was more disappointing to me the others, since I’ve been practicing pretty well lately, so I thought I might actually be able to do something respectable this weekend.

I did put the rest back during lunch, and the second half of the day was better, although not terribly impressive given that we were at the close distances.  Still, it did give me a little glimmer of hope for tomorrow.

We will start out tomorrow with an elimination round at 10 AM, and follow that up with 900 round in the afternoon.

My shiny new Hoyt Contender Elite arrived today!  As you can probably tell, I’m pretty excited about it.  I slapped my stuff on it and shot about 20 arrows through it tonight, and so far it seems quite nice.  The GTX cams are awesome!  They feel much better than the Fury cams on my old bow.

I have a lot more fine tuning to do, but from the little bit I shot it today I am pretty sure I am going to like the bow a lot.

As an added bonus, I think its kinda pretty too!

Today was the second and last day of the NFAA Indoor Sectionals.  I wound up shooting 1 X worse than yesterday, finishing with 300 and 49 X’s – and a weekend-total of 600 with 99 X’s.  (Perfect is 600-120X).  This makes twice in a row now that I have set a goal of shooting 100+ X’s for the weekend, and twice I have fallen short.  That is very disappointing to me as the 100 X bar is pretty low.  I know I can shoot better than this.

Oh well.

Debbie accidentally went Smurf huntin’ again today (which means she shot an arrow in the blue, costing her one point).  She was a little bummed about that, but she improved on her X’s from yesterday, so that is good.

This tournament pretty much finishes up the indoor season.  The next few weeks won’t have much going on, and then the outdoor season will start up in April.  My new bow should be here around the first part of April, so I am excited to get it and take it outside for a while.

Today was the first day of the NFAA Indoor Sectionals (regionals). Our region includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Alaska.  There are shoots being held in each state this weekend, and will be combined for the final results.

Debbie came up from Sweet Home to shoot this weekend, and since we got to choose our own shooting lanes we shot  next to each other, which is fun.  Very much like old times.

I shot a 300 with 50 X’s, which is 1 X better than I did two weeks ago at State, although I shot a much higher concentration of really good arrows today (shots that were right on the X and in the same hole over and over again).  That made me feel good, but I am a bit disappointed as I’ve been practicing more in the 52-54 X range the last week or so.  In my head I feel like I can do better.

Debbie finished up with a 299 and 38 X’s.  She was in much the same boat as I was: she shot a lot of good shots, but struggled through more than usual.

I guess that’s what we get for playin’ hookey for so long.

We shoot tomorrow at 1:30PM.

The results for last weekends OBH State Indoor Championships have been posted, so I thought I’d share them.  I as I mentioned in my previous post, Debbie won her division, which is Senior Female Freestyle (abbreviated “S-F-FS”).  My division is Adult Male Freestyle, abbreviated “A-M-FS”.

I finished in 17th (out of 39), not exactly a barn-burning finish, but all-in-all I guess it wasn’t terrible.  If I hadn’t dropped the point that I did, I would have moved up 5-6 places, which is more in line with where I felt I should be, both in terms of placement and score.

Full results are available  by following this link.