Stephanie MillerFirst and foremost, I would like to thank the Clarke Sinclair Memorial organization for helping elite athletes find funding to travel to international competitions. Without your help, it would be increasingly difficult for many archers to fund their international travel expenses and daily training expenses, especially as many of the top archers in the country are in college. The experience at the World University Games in Izmir, Turkey was unforgettable and I would like to thank those who supported us financially and who wished us the best of luck at the tournament. It definitely paid off.

We arrived at the tournament with a few days of practice ahead of us, which was a definite advantage; the wind was extremely strong and gusty, especially in the afternoon, making it difficult to hold the sight on the aiming point, not to mention to shoot a competitive score. When the qualification round finally came around, we shot 72 arrows at 70 meters. I shot a 298 and a 308 for a combined score of a 606, which placed me as the 17th seed in the individual round.

The next day I shot the individual elimination rounds. I won my first match, 150-149 against a Malaysian archer. My second match I shot against another Malaysian archer, whose qualification rank was 16th. It was a very competitive match, but I was unable to come back after my first end. She won the match 160-157. Although I lost my 1/16th elimination round, I tied for 19th and shot a personal best pass in international competition. The competitors at the Games were very accomplished, to say the least; I shared the field with Olympians and World Champions.

The final day I shot the team round with my fellow teammates, Ashley Kamuf and Kate Anderson. This team round differs from those shot at World Championships or our National Championships because the target has a gold center the normal size of the 9 an 10 ring, yet the rest of the target is red. An arrow in the gold counts as a hit and scores one point, while an arrow anywhere in the red, even if it is off the bale, scores zero points. With such a simple scoring system, the matches are often very close, as our own matches proved to be. Our team rank was 8th after the qualification day and our first match was against Belarus, ranked 9th. Going into the last end, the U.S. team was down by one point. I shot 3 hits my last end, and because my teammates also shot very well the last end, we won the match by 2 points. Our next match was against the Korean archers, who are the best in the world. They beat us, scoring a 24 out of a possible 27, while we shot a respectable score of 16 points. While it was a combined team effort that led us to this score, I was especially pleased with my own personal performance; I shot 8 out of my 9 arrows in the gold. The U.S. women’s recurve team tied for 5th.

I didn’t walk away with any medals, but the experience of the World University Games was worth its weight in gold. I believe that this tournament experience, as well as other international tournaments, will help me accomplish my goals in archery and will help me on my way to making an Olympic team.

Thank you again, Stephanie Miller