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.