Practice until your idols become your rivals.

To quote the man who put a bow in our daughter's hands for the first time seems appropriate today. Originally the plan for this weekend's tournament was for our daughter to shoot one age division up in Cub and shoot against her friend and rival Amanda. With Amanda having to drop due to injury our daughter decided she wanted to shoot yet another age division up in Cadet. I asked if she was sure she wanted to shoot at longer distances against 16 year olds and her response made me proud. "Dad, I've got a wall full of trophies, I want a challenge more than I want another trophy."

So today our newly turned 12 year old daughter went out and stood on the line with 15-16 year olds and launched arrows downrange. These are some of the same girls that she's known and looked up to since she started in archery. She more than held her own qualifying in 5th. And Amanda proved that competition can bring out the best in friendships, she came down from her home in northern Arizona and is spending the weekend with us just she she can cheer our daughter on.

She also shot in team rounds this afternoon. My usual all girl team nicknamed Charlie's Angels of Death and Destruction was two thirds MIA, Amanda with injury and Aleks failing to register in time. So our daughter last week during practice grabbed one of her teammates and asked her to shoot as a 2 girl team. So the shy, quiet and reserved Nicole stepped out on the field today and shot her first team round with our loud and boisterous daughter. The girls did great and worked well as a team, unfortunately a 141/150 wasn't enough to advance to the next round.

Tomorrow brings head to head elimination rounds. The irony is Maya and Madison have to shoot against each other again in the first round. Madison is the daughter of our daughter's first coach, and has been a friend, mentor and role model for our daughter ever since she started. The two girls had to face each other in the first round earlier this month in the Arizona Cup with Madison eliminating our daughter. It was probably the most emotionally challenging matchup there could've been for both girls, I'm not sure tomorrow is going to be any easier.

My view for most of the day.


Maya and Nicole working together as a team. Team rounds are the most fun that I have as a coach. A team of 2-3 archers has 2 minutes to put 6 arrows on target, only 1 team member can be on the shooting line at a time, and a team member can shoot no more than 2 arrows before they have to come behind the waiting line and the next archer advances to shoot. You can see our daughter at the ready with an arrow in hand, the tip of the arrow can not come out of the quiver until the archer is at the shooting line. It's fast, it's fun and a successful team has to be able to think on the fly and be ready to improvise.


Nicole spotting for our daughter.