Well folks, with your help, other Sling-it sales, some savings, and some spending money from grandma, we managed to get Cub1 (my daughters screen name on other pages) to Colorado Springs, CO for the NAA National Target Championships! I swear, this girl is the only person I ever knew of that can improve her shooting at a National tournament!
Cub1 had spent several weeks preparing nearly every day for this tournament. Before we had left, she had a hard left shot that we couldn't figure out, but we felt it was prety much under controll by the time we left. A little 50M shooting before we left on Friday in 98 deg F weather confirmed she was happy with her shot. We got in the mountains on Saturday morning, and did some sight seeing before we headed to the foot hills of Colorado Springs on Sunday to check in the hotel. Practice and equipment inspection was on Monday, and some of the left shot seemed to reappear........man, what a time to rear it's ugly head again. "Oh well, we're here, so just go do your best" I say.
Tuesday brought the first day of competition, and the ugly left was not as bad, but still present on occasion, especially after changing distances. A call to her coach said "high shoulder", so that's what she worked on that day of shooting. Later that night, I figured out she had absolutely
no pre-load in her back, thus back tension was impossible to get right. A quick lesson, a couple hours of practice, and she was ready for the next day.
She had to be she guessed.
Sure enough, Wed. competition came along, and the pre-load fixed the spuratic groups and hard lefts. Proper back tension was now possible, and only left a two ring difference in her group width wise, depending on other form differences (to be delt with later), which she worked on the rest of the week. After Wed, she was still in second place, but it seemed she was keeping pace with the number one female Cub Recurve shooter in the country. She was shooting on the same bale as two female Cub compounders on Wed, and
she was the one breaking knocks at 20M that day!
Thursday, and 50M again, she started improving even more, beating the number one recurver by 4 at 50M, but dropping 4 to her at 40M, tieing them for the day.
Friday was the last day, and again she held her own, loosing some points at 30M because of questioning her abilities (hey, she's a 13 yr old girl, that happens once in a while), which spread into her 20M distance, but she still managed to take back one point from the leader at the last distance.
All together, she ended up shooting a 2468 on the double FITA, with a 1205 for the first one, and a 1263 for the second! She'll be working on several form issues over the next few months, and building back her form with the proper back tension. I watched her shoot a few 30M groups in practice with 6 arrows touching, so I feel she should be ready to either work on some National records next year, or break into the next class up, which ever she feels like.
In any case, Congradulations Miranda for a well shot tournament and a hard earned second place finish! We had a great time, and got lots of questions about Sling-it there. Even a few of the shooters from Chinese Taipei ended up with a sling in trade for other gifts! She had a GREAT time, and we can't wait for next year!