The qualification rounds for the Arizona Cup are in the books. We're extremely proud of our daughter tonight. Shooting 2 full divisions up, without the support of me, my wife or her coach she qualified with a solid mudpack finish of 18th out of 28. To give an idea how tight the competition in her division is, when the first round was complete only 6 points separated 6th from 18th. My wife was the assistant director of scoring and watched the scoring live as it happened. The girls were tight all afternoon with positions shifting constantly, our daughter at one point was in eighth before slipping back down to 18th. I think I'm glad as was at the far end of the field judging the senior men's recurve match. Jokes were being made about making sure the AED device was fully charged and accessible.

The winds this afternoon were shifting, strong and unpredictable, especially during the second round. On top of that, my daughter decided to take the advice of one of her friends and try bubbling off for the first time ever to correct for the wind. Bubbling off is a difficult technique where an archer cants the bow into the wind to compensate for it. They use the bubble in their sight level to judge the amount of cant induced, thus the term bubbling off. The advantage of this technique is that it allows an archer to keep their sight centered on the target. She was on her own today and all decisions on sight adjustments and corrections for wind were solely on her. For the youngest one out there, she did damn good!

The bittersweet part of the day came when the elimination brackets for tomorrow's competition were announced. Our daughter has to shoot against her long time mentor and friend, Madison Sclief. Madison is the daughter of our daughter's first coach and she's always looked up to her. If one looks at all of the Arizona state archery records for 12 and under, if our daughter doesn't own the record, Madison does. It's going to be a tough match for me to watch tomorrow with her idol becoming her rival.

On a personal note, judging for me today was an incredible opportunity. I was a line judge in the afternoon for the men's senior recurve qualification rounds. I had a better than front row seat to watch the best in the world including our men's Olympic team from Rio of Brady Ellison, Jake Kaminsky and Zach Garrett compete. Amazing to watch and learn from athletes at this level.

Awesome job Maya! I was looking forward to hearing an update. Good job Dad! And that has got to be a blast watching not only the Olympians, but everyone. How much of that do you end up using for coaching? Thanks for the update, good luck Maya!

Great job Team Maya!

Thanks for posting all the updates. It is great following along and your posts always make me feel like I am there.

First thing I looked for online this morning while having my first cuppa coffee!!

Wonderful work, Maya

It speaks volumes about her self-confidence that when the chips were down yesterday in that wind, she had enough faith in herself to try something new to compensate...

You GO girl!

Don