Matt Stutzman

Archery is already hard as it is, trying to shoot 70 meters with 44 to 56 pounds of draw weight.  How about you try to shoot this just as accurately as any Olympic archer but with no arms.  Matt using his compound has just broken his own record of farthest most accurate shot.  His new record of 283.047 meters or about 930.04 feet.  Matt shoots by holding his bow up with his leg and pulls back the string with his mouth.  Matt is on the US Paralympic Archery Team and in 2012 went to win a silver medal.  This was all told to my grandpa when last year in 2015 SoCal Showdown he volunteered as a helper.  He was assigned to go get and pull Matt's arrows 60 meters away at the Paralympic trials.   This was also my first time shooting up a division into the Cadet category and since my grandpa wasn't at my back checking my arrow flight, form, and arrow position on the target this made me even more nervous.  IT was a good experience for me, my grandpa, and grandma.  Congrats to Matt's new record and his performance at the Paralympic games.

Medals

Not to brag but how many medals do you have? Medals doesn't matter is its local, state, national, or international (world) medals.  Since I started archery at the end of 2012, so I have been shooting for three years, I have accumulated 48 medals.  Twenty-three local medals, 15 state medals, and 9 national medals.  This is a pride for me, my family, my coach, and my club.  I am the second archer ever to get onto JDT from this club and the only archery still shooting with nationals medals.  The other female archer stopped shooting because she went to college.  She left as a good example to the club.  Rather there is another way to categorize the medals.  I have categorized them by difficulty of the tournament.  Another way to arrange them is by first, second, and third or gold, silver, and bronze.  Not not all 48 medals are gold, it is a variety of all three.  If I classify my medals the other way I have 20gold/first place medals,  21 silver medals/ second place, and seven third place/bronze medals.

School fundraiser

Thirsday April 21, 2016 the school Portola had a fundraiser.  The eight grade fundraiser was at lazer tag from 6-10.  I got there at the same time as my froends becase we carpooled but not all my friends got to lazer tag at the same time.  We where all split because we didnt get the same color wristbands.  The bad part was that we fouldnt change so we could all play together.  My archery skill and previous knowledge of the game lazer tag helped me tremendously.  Out of the four games I played I got, First place with my all time highest score of 22,402.  Te next game someone was being the biggest fricken dick ever and followed me around shooting me every five seconds.  Yet still I was able to have a higher score than that person.  The hhird game I got First again and them the last game I got second by 2,000 points losing to Jasper.  Over all the night was fun with some few stupid people sliding down the island part of two escalators, and jamming the elevator.  But hhe night was still amazing.

Teenage Struggles

In life there are many struggles.  Some you overcome, some you avoid some just keep nagging at the dack of your neck.  As a teenager Inam being hit with all these struggles.  Between sports, academics, friends, and even family time.  My dream is to become an Olympic archery but the academics is stopping me because the time I spend studying for Spanish and Test is taken away from archery.  The stress of tests and homework lowers the ability and my mindset while shooting.  Friends, during the last two year I have lost some friends.  Before I was spending every day 3-5 hours at "playdates" as they where called in Elementary school.  Now I am spending tnat time on training for archery so the friends I had still know menbut I talk to them less and less as I get more serious into archery.  Last is my family.  I am getting to know my grandparents a ton because my mom and dad are spending time with my four younger siblings, but I am feeling that my brother is feeling lonely.  He doesnt have the brother love-spending time.  Day by day I feel he wants to get back at me for leaving him for archery.  He always gets mad when I come and now doesn't want to spent time with me.  These are the all the life struggles I fave as a teenager.

Popularity of Archery

Archery is one of the fastest growing popular sports.  This sport has particularly become popular in young girls.  This is mostly because of the movies that portrayed female archers.  Some of the recent movies include Mockingbird: The Hunger Games, and Brave.  Some of the male archer movies include: Robin Hood and The Avengers.  With archery being shown in movies its also like advertising and growing interest to the sport.   Archery may not be popular now in The United States but it is very popular in other countries.  Archery is to Korea as Football is to America, is a correct analogy to how popular archery is in Korea.   Also for archery in the US about 70% of the archers here have Korean heritage.  Not only is the amout of archers extremely different but the amount of practice also.  While most archers here in the US get about 15 hours a week most Koreans get about 42 hours a week.  Americans average about two to three hours of practice a day while Korenas get five to six a day.  Crazy right,another difference is the time in which we start.  Most kids in the US started from the ages 7-12 while most Koreans starts at the early age of 3-5.  This is the differece between American and Korean archers.

Pin shoot

Tomorrow March 17, 2016 is Vanguards first pin shoot of the year.  Of course just as outdoor season starts they want to do do all the indoor activities.  They plan everything terrible in which once you stop shooting the distance for the year they deside to make you practice againfor the pin shoots.  As in previous blogs I have said the awards I have achieved all the way up to my silver olympian award at both outdoor and indoor pins.  Today I will practive the indoor distance of 18 meters so I can go for my gold olympian.  I have to shoot a 290 out of 300 on the small target of 40cm by 40cm.  Outdoors I should be recieving my silver olympian also.  For gold olympian at 70 meters the score needed is 320 and I currently shot a 317 at the practice outdoor shoot at Long Beach.  Right now is the transition from indoor to outdoor distance so there are many practice outdoor and the the last of the indoor tournaments at this time.  It make is difficult to keep yor sight at a same place since in two weeks in outdoor nationals.

Range

Outdoor season is just starting.  The biggest season and the only other one compared to short indoor.  There are some big problems concerning people that shoot at the woodly range.  They have closed down the range for 4 months but no its starting to leak into outdoor season.  The park was supposed to open a month ago just as indoor finished but because woodly is a city owned park the work is slow.    The estimated day of open is April 15th a week after the first outdoor nationals.   This is a problem because us woodly shooters dont have a range to shoot the needed 70 or 60 meters.  The closest range with the distances needed is El Dorado Park in Long Beach.  This is at least a 40 minute drive there with no traffic so archers who would practice every day outdoor can now only practive once or twice a week.  This will be detrimental to the scores to the archers tjat shoot at woodly.

Pins

During your time in the sport of archery, if you are in a club and under 18 you are eligible for JOAD pins.  There are many different kinds of Joad pics from almost every type of shooting style.  There is barebow, recurve, and compound.  In addition to these catagories they have outdoor and indoor pins.  Each type on a different color laniard.  For recurve there is a blue for outdoor and a yellow laniard for indoor.  There are eight pins for each laniard that can be for advanced through beginners but for the top level competators they have three special pins.  The bronze, silver, and gold olympian pins.  If you have shot the score to achieve these top three pins you can't go to your club to award them but you have to do a whole process of getting coaches and judges signatures to turn your scorecard into USAA.  USAA will then send these pins toyour club along with other awards for achieving these top level pins.  Some prizes include jackets, plaques, and signed documents.  There are all kimds of awards to achieve in archery.  

Clubs

There is a long line of things that have to fall in place before you can compete in archery.  First you have to have a USA archery membership.  Once you have your membership it allows you to compete in all the non-JOAD tournaments hosted my USA archery.  To participate in the Joad events/tournaments you havento be part of a USA archery registered club.  I myself am belonged to the club Vanguard held in Van Nuys.  There are many other clubs all over California and all over the USA.  Some clubs exmples are: Joy Lee, Pasadena, Oak Tree Archers, and Woodly Park archers.  Only kids from 8-18 can join Joad tournaments but people of all ages can join the club.  The club can do many events and things to help the young archers.  The club can pay a coach to privately coach the kids or the club can be at a public park with no private coach and its just the kids analyze there own forms.  All in all public park would be cheaper, but it still does the job of getting the kids into tournaments under a club.  Yet it lacks the intensely of private and one on one coaching that helps the kids axcel quickly and at a gradual pace.

Indoor Goals

Indoor Nationals has been here and gone.  No one expected it to come around so fast.  It was sadly the last of the indoor tournaments though.  The only three indoor tournaments of the year are all in two months January and February.  After these months everything changes, from shooting 18 meters with no wind to 70 meters up to 5 mile an hour winds.  For state I shot a 1114 with four scores consisting of: 271, 275, 283, and 285.  For indoor nationals I wanted to beat this score and rank in the top 5.  For state I shot the in the cub division, for nationals I was going to shoot up into the cadet division with 17 year olds.  From 2/18/16-2/21/16 I shot at Chula Vista for nationals.  I shot a score consisting of: 278, 282, 283, and 280 for a total of 1123.  Dissapointing bwcause I was 1 point from third place.  So far I am in third but there is another two weeks of competitions around the nation.  I am hoping I dont drop any places.  My goal is to stay in the top 5 for all nationals so I can get on the USAT team which competes internationally.

Indoor Nationals

This past week from 2/18/16-2/21/16 was Indoor Nationals.  Both tournaments Joad and Nationals where held at a new location this year.  The new locations for Joad and Nationals was Chula Vista at the Olympic Training Center but they also held Nationals this year at the old venue because of how many participants there was.  This is the longest tournament of the year stretching over two months because of all the locations that have to send in the scores to USAA.  So if your the first location to finish because because its a 3 day tournament in technically, then u have to wait the full time to know your actual standings.  You could be 1st the first week but by the emd you could be pushed down to even 20th place.  Thats mainly dependent on score how much you drop in ranking.  The JOAD tournament is only one day and is always on Friday, and Nationals is Saturday and Sunday.  Nationals is a full Indoor Fita which is out of 1200 maximum points.  This year was Nationals 47th year in a row.

Up and coming

This week there was the first of the JDT camps.  The camps designed to push you to your limits and train you to be a future olympian.  Once you get picked for JDT you get to pick your top three coach choises.  You dont always get who you want but all coaches our the top level five coaches who help coach the olympic team.   For this weeks camp I didnt go for various reasons.  Yes once on JDT you are required to attend two training camps every year, untill you graduate.  I was only informed of the dates for two camps so at first I was worried that I had and it was manditory to attend this camp,  but then I was informed that there are four camps a year.  The first and main reason I didnt attend the first JDT camp was because of the timing and how close it was to nationals.  I didnt want to have any major form changes before a major tourmament like Indoor nationals.  If it was before state indoor or Vegas shoot then I would have definitly gone.  Reason number two is the camp is being held at the same place as the event of Indoor nationals so I didnt want the coaches that just changed my form to see/pressure me during this big event.  Mainly I didnt go because of form changes and the pressure of maintaining the form during the big event.

JDT

Now that I am on JDT there are many benefits and tasks.  Benefits in which the archer is  able to proceed and gain training with less expenses.  Yet some of the risks are  having to spend more money.  The benefits are: training with some of the top and Olympic level coaches twice a year.  The risk is that you have to miss school and may get behind in some of your work.  You get 50% of all archery equipement that you are going to buy, yet the risk is you may end up spending lots of money at once now because of this discount.  Your on a team with some of the best shooters in the country, so you cant let your team down by having an off day.  A risk is that you have to go/travel to all the USAT tournaments (United States Archery Team).  The USAT tournaments are all over the US.  The tournaments are hosted in California, Arizona, Florida, Texas, Alabama, and another in California.  In all of these tournament you have to shoot the division Cadet or above so even if your younger you have to shoot up.  Lots of traveling which means lots of money spent on the event, hotel, car, food, and gas.  These are the risks and benefits to being on JDT.

Las Vegas

This week 1/28-31/16 I went to Las Vegas to shot the biggest tournament in the world.  This is a tournament run not only by USA Archery but also NFAA.  NFAA is the National Field Archery Association for hunting and field archery.  People from all over the world from Olympians to begginners come to shoot and have fun.  This tournament is not really a ranking tournament but its more to have fun and see new products.  The sponsors of this event all bring there items and sell, and people try all the new oroducts.  The Casino that its held at every year is called South Point Casino, and this year was the 50th year anniversary.  There was a big celebration and all the sponsors from all the past years came.  The good thing about shooting in Las Vegas compared to Columbia (were the world cup was held) is that the parents dont get bored and fall asleep.  They can gamble and play games while there kids shoot.  If you shoot the adult divisions you can dhoot for prizes, so first gets a set amout of money, second, third, and so on.  First place winners in every division got $50,000, and for the kids, they can get $1000 in scholarship money.  Yes you want to win the money but this tournament is more for fun than anything else.

Tulare State

From the 8-10 of January, 2016, I went to Tulare for Joad State Indoors and the regular, State Indoors.  This is set up like the normal indoor tournaments, but this time they were trying something new.  They made the scoring like a test.  Instead of two people scoring on paper with pens they are now using scantrons. Before it used to take hours on hours to sort and rank all the archers by physically finding them.  Now with the scantrons it take within minutes and now you can see your rank before the tournament is even done.  On the first day Friday was the Joad shoot, we got to shoot 60cm targets and I scored a 287 and a 291 which gave me first place.  Then on Saturday I was a little below my average but I was still first for the day.  I did worse because instead of a giant 60cm target we had to shoot on the smallest 40cm targets.   On Saturday I scored a 271 and then the next round shot a 275.  I was in first by one point and everyone knew because of the new scantron system.  The next day I was pumped because I knew there was still next week people could beat my scores and I wasn't shooting to my full potential.  I came in and I was on fire, I almost scored a 292 on the small target but sadly I dropped my mental game and shot a 23 one end to drop 7 points.  Now the maximum score I could get was 285.  I ended with a 283 that round and the next round I got a 285.  So every round I ended up increase g my score.  Out of 1200 I scored a 1114 and first for the first week.  Hopefully no one beats me the second week.