Year in Review #3
Ever since we moved to California, we've said we should really take a trip out to Las Vegas. As it turns out there is a huge archery competition & trade show every year in Vegas & it seemed like the perfect opportunity. My first archery competition & our first trip to Vegas all rolled into one.
Imagine the great ballroom of an old Vegas hotel (The Riviera to be exact) complete with gaudy carpets. Now imagine targets lined up on two sides, with chairs & stands in the middle and hundreds of archers lined up on either side, 18m in front of the targets. On top of that, this is just one of four shooting slots during the day, which means at the same time, hundreds more archers are walking around the casino floor wearing quivers full of arrows and possibly carrying their bows around as well. It was a pretty surreal scene.
We arrived in Vegas on Thursday evening & went down to check out the shooting scene. The actual competition was three days of shooting, Friday-Sunday, but Thursday was a practice day, so there was already plenty of archers down in the ballroom shooting. That evening I saw 2 of the US Olympic Team members and during the coming days I saw the other 3. It was super cool, especially after watching them shoot in the Olympics just a few months before. That's one of the coolest things I've found about archery so far. People of all levels shooting at the same tournaments, which means you can watch and learn from the shooting of the top people in the sport. Pretty cool :)
Shooting Day 1: I was SO nervous. Sweaty palms. Not to mention I had to start shooting at 7am. Good thing we were staying in the same hotel as the shoot. I shot 170 out of 300. Not as good as my practice scores, but I thought not bad for my very first experience in competition shooting.
Shooting Day 2: Saturday I was feeling better. Shooting started a little later, I was more awake & knew what to expect after shooting a full round the day before. My first shot was good. The next one less so. Then I missed. I didn't just miss the target, I missed the entire huge bale. Then I missed again & again. I was starting to freak out. What was I doing wrong?! Luckily the guy next to me noticed my knocking point was loose and was sliding around on the string, which meant the my arrow was going totally off from where I was aiming. Of course I left all my tools up in my room, so I had nothing to fix it with. Everyone I was shooting with was nice enough to run around and find someone with the proper tools and then help me fix the nocking point back in the right spot. I was so lucky to have so many nice people around me. After my nocking point was fixed, I recovered nicely and ended the day with a 177 out of 300. I was very proud of myself for coming back and finishing so strong, scoring even better than the day before even with 4 misses!
Shooting Day 3: I ended the shoot with a 216 out of 300, a personal best! I was very happy with this considering it was all such a new experience and the trouble I had the day before!
Every day of the competition, Chip set up camp behind me, sitting just behind the line only the archers were allowed to cross. He brought me water, snacks and kept an eye on my target. What would I do without my squire!?
Shooting was only a few hours for each group, which meant plenty of time for sight seeing before and/or after shooting. We mostly walked up and down the strip taking in all the sights, walking through the casinos. We decided most of slot machines were boring, but we did have a fun time with the roulette machines. We're decided to make the Vegas tournament an annual event for us and are already looking forward to next year. Here's to hoping for lots of fun and improved scores!