My First Archery Competition!
I competed in my first archery competition, in France! Here’s how it went:
Here’s a little back story of my archery journey. I started archery for the first time last September, in France, because I wanted to try an extracurricular activity where I could meet French people and try something new that isn’t as accessible to begin in the US. When I found out about the archery club in my small French town, I took the leap and tried my first class. Before starting archery I thought it was a very niche sport and always had a desire to try it one day, now was my chance! I quickly fell in love with the sport because of its individuality and concentration. When I’m at archery, I can focus in my own world and put all of my patience and focus into shooting my arrows. Archery has helped me calm down by easing my anxiety as well as lengthening my back and posture! I’ve also grown quite good at it if I do say so myself!
I decided to enroll in this competition on a whim for the experience, I’m only in France with the opportunity to compete in an archery tournament once! So I attended the archery competition, having no idea what was to come. The archery competition was in another local town’s gymnasium room. There were ten targets lined up and around 40 archers. Before the competition began there was an inspection of equipment where each archer went up and had their bow and arrows inspected. Then it was time to let the games begin!
Each target at 20 meters had four archers shooting: Archer A, B, C, and D. Archers A & B would begin and have two minutes to shoot three arrows, then it would be Archers C & D’s turn. After everyone was finished, we would go to the target altogether and chart our points. There were ten rounds like this. The first couple rounds I was nervous and felt like I had to shoot my three arrows as fast as possible. I later realized that I had time to relax which is what lead me to higher accuracy; I would wait until the archers around me were finished with their arrows then I would take my time to accurately aim and shoot! At the end of the ten rounds, let’s call it flight one, I scored 245/300 points, not bad for a first comp!
After flight one there was a twenty minute break where homemade cakes, crepes, and drinks were being sold. I ate a 50 cent Nutella crepe because once again, it’s all for the experience. Even if I experience another archery competition in my future will there be crepes? Probably not so that’s why I ate one! And I think it benefitted my accuracy in flight 2…Nutella crepes will give you power!
Flight two was the same format with ten shooting rounds of three arrows. I came into this competition only for the experience, whether I would score well or not at all. But now in the second flight I had a new goal, to win this thing😎. I I scored even better for flight two with a score of 263/300! My total score of the whole competition was 508/600😊. At the end of the competition was awards. I won first in my girls age category! It was an exciting moment for me, my first archery competition ever and I won first place! I even got a medal! My archery club also won first place between the other two clubs competing, it was a successful competition for all of us!
That was a recap of my first archery competition experience! I’m really glad I joined this unique sport this year and I would like to continue archery in the US. My friends called me Katniss after I told them about my competition😂. Katniss I’m coming for your title!
