God was in control and we were going to need His help to do what we had train months in advance to do. So here we are, the first day of competition. We wake up really early, get ready, and eat breakfast. I look at my food going, there is no way I'm going to be able to eat this. The butterflies in my stomache take up a lot of room. However, I was able to force down enough food to keep me sustained until lunch......maybe.
By the time we get to the FITA field there are already quite a few people there. Thankfully the guys had already brought over our gear so we didn't have to carry it from the car to the tent. Once everyone got there and got gear put together the range official started stating the rules. Now, since this "wasn't a sanctioned FITA event, they didn't have to follow FITA rules." Therefore, you could go up to the line whenever you felt like it, there was no verbal 30 second warning, and you didn't score the 10x's, just the 10's. Now, this didn't affect us, but the compounds only scored inner 10s. So basically what was normally a 10x for them was a 1o and what was normally a 10 was a 9. It was strange. We also only had two practice rounds from 60 meters and that was it. Normally you have two practice arrows from each distance. Nope, the only practice you got was from 60 meters, so you better had every other distance down-pat or you were in a lot of trouble.
So, the first two practice rounds weren't great, and the next round after that wasn't either. But, my second round of three from 60 was AMAZING. God was really looking out for me on that round. I got three tens, two of which would have been "X's" if I had been allowed to score them. It pretty much went downhill from there, which is strange. The closer I got to the target, the worse I got. Now, it was only by about one point each round, but it was still one point worse. When we finially got to 30 meters my score improved. Overall as a team we did really well. I was so proud to be apart of this team. I had pride saying that I came from Georgia (especially to the Texas guys since we were beating them pretty good).
The awards ceremony that night was pretty good. It took them a while to get to recurve archery, but when they did, you could feel the nerves tighten in our section. We were all shaking with butterflies. How did we measure up compared to every other recurve archer in the nation?
They started calling out placing and scores for individuals and it was looking pretty good. The only male on our team got sixth and our top shooter got third individually. That was good. We had two in the top ten. Then they started calling out teams. Fifth and then Fourth. We beat both of those team's scores. WE PLACED!!!! We got third that night as a team. We were so excited! We couldn't believe that we had placed third out of 16 teams in the nation! Because God loved us so much he allowed us to place as high as we did that night. And He had so many more blessings to offer us!
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