The Versus shoot Ruben Ochoa puts on in Guadalajara, Mexico is a tournament that I continue to believe is the best early season prep for archers of all levels. Last year I made the mistake of skipping this tournament, and I definitely regretted it. I was not going to make that mistake this year, and I was happy to bring some new shooters to the event!
After a rough indoor season, I’ve been greatly looking forward to the start of outdoor season. Unfortunately, the weather here in New England has not wanted to cooperate. It’s been a very rainy and cold end of winter, beginning of Spring, so any 70m practice I’ve had has been out of my sunroom. I was definitely looking forward to heading to Mexico for some vitamin D!
About a week before leaving, I started having some issues with popping the arrow up on to my plunger right as the arrow went through the clicker. I would not know this was happening until, I would go to retrieve my arrows and find I had missed the bale high and right. In fact, we had a local indoor 70m shoot (Brandeis Shamrock Shoot), and I shot really well minus some misses.
We weren’t able to solve the mystery of why this was happening before I left for Mexico, so I was a little nervous about the event (and AZ Cup following). Practice day was great weather, and while I didn’t have any of my weird misses (WOOHHOOO!), I did have a vane fall off and I missed the bale low on a shot. I didn’t think much of this and was just excited for scoring the next day since it appeared my issue had disappeared.
I felt like I started a little slow in qualification, but I started to pick up steam in the second half. Unfortunately, I then had a vane fall off, resulting in a 2! I wasn’t too concerned because I knew in this tournament qualification really meant next to nothing, so I just kept shooting and enjoying the warm, sunny weather.
When we were finished, I looked at my score and realized I had shot a 621 (3 points off my pb), and that was with the 2! Dang, if I would have just paid more attention to my arrows, I could have had a new pb…ohhh well, lesson learned.
The great thing about the Versus tournament is all the round robin matches you shoot. Recurve women didn’t have quite the attendance I was hoping for, so we didn’t get to shoot the first round of round robins, but we still ended up with 3 rounds.
Compound archers shoot 3 ends of 5 arrows (3 mins) during round robin matches, so I had assumed it was the same for recurve….whoops, I should have read the rules. We still had 3 mins to shoot, but we had to shoot two ends of 6 arrows. I was a little concerned about the time, being the first tournament of the year and some wind to contend with, but I luckily never found the three minutes to be an issue.
I will say, I really don’t like the two ends of six format. It’s almost two quick of a match and one bad (or good) end really can make or break the match. Regardless of the number of arrows shot, I wish it was at least three ends like the compound archers.
Overall, my matches didn’t seem to go as well as qualification. I had a lot of left and right issues, but I did notice my up and down groups were very good. So I focused on the positive, and just tried to make sure I was shooting good shots and reading the wind as best as I could. I ended up finishing in the top 10, but I didn’t make the final 4 for medal matches. I did, however, get to cheer on a lot of my friends who did.
In the end, after a long period of frustration with my shooting, this tournament was a chance to enjoy myself again. I got to soak up some much needed vitamin D, eat some of my favorite food, and see compound friends that I usually don’t get to spend much time with. I want to end by once again thanking Ruben and his entire staff for another great tournament! I stand by my claim that there is no better way to get ready for the outdoor season, especially if you live where its cold. If you don’t believe me ask Amy Jung, or Dan/Emily McCarthy who all made the trip for the first time.