I’ve gotten pretty behind on posts from my tournaments, so I’m going to try to post up recaps from my last couple over the next week. First up is the Brandeis, Indoor 70M tournament.
Lucky for me, the organizers listened to my feedback from last year, so compound archers now shoot 50M at this tournament, just like every other FITA outdoor tournament. I like this event for a couple reasons. First, it is a fundraiser for a local college archery team (Brandeis), but even better it is a great opportunity for those of us living in the cold Northeast to check our outdoor setups and make sure everything is dialed in before dealing with the elements outdoors.
I missed the tournament last year, due to taking my level 3 coaching course, but this year I knew it was a must attend event with leaving for Mexico/Arizona just a few days afterwards. It turned out it was a good thing I went, as some of the top men’s pros were there and discovered an issue with my setup, that they were able to fix before we started scoring.
For me, this tournament was all about familiarizing myself with my outdoor equipment. Unlike last year when I shot a Hoyt, I now shoot a different bow for indoors and outdoors. They have two very different feeling cams, so I spent most of the day getting used to that. In addition, I decided to shoot a pin for outdoors this year to help with aiming off. I found the dot I used indoors was too big to accurately aim off in the wind, and since my scope originally came with a fiber, I decided to try that. That was also an adjustment for me, especially indoors, since there is no wind or other conditions causing you to aim anywhere but center.
I ended up shooting a 687, which I was “ok” with. My goal was to shoot a 690 or better, especially since it was an indoor tournament, but considering that was much higher than any score I had shot last year, I couldn’t complain. Now, I knew where I stood and I would need to build on that during the year to up my ranking here in the US.
