Qualification rounds are complete and it's been a hell of a day. Our daughter shot up an age division in Cub so she and Amanda could shoot against each other again. As expected they had a tight battle qualifying 1st and 2nd in the division. The surprise was Maya's best friend from our own team stepping it up in her first outdoor tournament and qualifying in 3rd.

Our daughter's major accomplishment today was finally earning her USA Archery 6 Star Award. The 6 Star Award is earned by shooting 6 tens consecutive. In an outdoor tournament it means shooting a perfect end of 60/60 points. She's been chasing that award for years now and manages to come up 1 point short.

An unusually calm day at Ben Avery this morning meant state records were being broken up and down the line. One of the up and coming girls on our team broke 2 of Maya's state records today. Maya's response was giving her a hug and telling her how proud she was of her. I'm still simultaneously happy and bummed. Records are made to be broken, at the same time a dad always wants to see his daughter's achievements live forever. As a coach, I also have to brag a little. Our club had 15 archers competing today and 10 of them qualified on the podium.

Qualifications are in the books, on to eliminations tomorrow. We run our state championships on the same format as Nationals; qualifications followed by brackets of single round head to head elimination. It's a test of an archer's mental game; shooting right next to your competitor knowing it's go on to the next round or go home.

Maya and Amanda are already predicting an endless amount of 1 arrow shootoff tiebreakers if they end up shooting against each other for gold tomorrow...

The view down the line at the start of scoring this morning.


As an archery parent, views like this always amaze me, how many tens of thousands of dollars are sitting there behind the shooting line?


I don't think it's any cheaper on the recurve side of the field.


Playing with my camera and picking my daughter's bow out of the crowd.


Maya and Elizabeth shooting next to each other.


A special picture for me, if you look closely you can see a black memorial bracelet on the wrist of Maya's bow arm. It's for our cousin Christopher, a Navy Corpsman that we lost during the battle to retake Ramadi, Iraq in 2006. Christopher's mother gave Maya that bracelet this summer and she rarely takes it off. Even though she never met Christopher, she takes him to tournaments and says that he helps calm her down.


And why I'm glad my daughter found archery. Three podium qualifiers, three competitors and three friends all in one picture.

Excellent! Best of luck Maya!

Looking forward to hearing about how it all went!

May you both continue with great success. Great job!

That is so great! I love keeping up with her so please keep the posts coming. Congratulations and good luck to you both!

Nice write up. Thanks for sharing.

Go Maya!

"Patiently" waiting for the Sunday evening update!

You GO, Girl!

Don

I have enjoyed following this journey.

You have every reason to be proud.

Thank you for sharing her success with all of us.

nice job

congrats all the way around