Texans Roxi Gillis, Claudia St. Clair, Ellis Gibson and Rick Stonebraker came away victorious in their respective divisions at the NFAA National Field Championship.
A perfect score for a round in this tournament is 560 points.
Scores:
Roxi Gillis – Youth Female Freestyle 424 – 446 – 504 = 1374
Claudia St. Clair – Adult Female Barebow 363 – 376 – 418 = 1157
Ellis Gibson - Senior Male Pro Compound 550 – 547 – 560 = 1657
Rick Stonebraker – Adult Male Freestyle Limited Recurve 526 – 520 – 556 = 1602
Rick defended his title he won last year in Darrington, Washington. That story is on the website at this link.
The target has a black center, a white ring and then another black outer circle. It scores 5-4-3. This is shot anywhere from 20 feet to 80 yards spread out through the woods in various degrees of angles and changes in elevation. The target size varies with the distance. A round consists of 28 targets with four arrows shot at each target for 112 arrows.
The first day was delayed due to heavy thundershowers that were relentless with intense lightning. The tournament was re-started at noon.
Stonebraker shot 526 and led Shane Parker by six points. Shane competed in the 1997 and 1999 world indoor championship, placing second and seventh respectively. He has been a top shooter for several years.
The same dimensions as the field round but the center is a white spot and the rest of the target face is black with a thin white line separating the four and three ring. The main difference is that the hunter round has many walk-up targets. Meaning you take a shot, step closer to the target, shoot, step closer for all four arrows.
In this round Shane Parker shot a 525 while Rick Stonebraker shot a 520 to hold a thin one-point lead going into the final round on Sunday.
The animal round is composed of shooting at animal profiles on cardboard with two scoring zones: the kill zone is usually the heart of the animal worth 20 points and a wound area that encompasses the rest of the animal worth 18 points. If you kill or wound the animal on the first shot, you do not have to shot a second or third arrow.
For the first 26 targets (out of 28), the two archers were only one point apart. Stonebraker finished with a 556 to Parker’s 554 and won by three, with a total score for the tournament of 1602.
For those who though that Kansas City lacked interest, there are several museums in the area. One is the Jessie James bank museum so I assume this is one he “held up.” The other is the Jessie James farm museum, which he may have “holed up” or maybe he was raised there. And of course, the setting for the movie ‘Wizard or Oz’ started off in Kansas so this is one historical exciting happening place to be!
Other Texans competing were TFArchival Archery president Andrew Rushing, Ron Harder, Troy Westley, Donna Rushing, Kathy Gillis, Kathy Cooney, Ron St. Clair, Roy Riley, Steve Coleman, Daniel Zabawa, Luis Gonzalez, Reggie Busbee, Joe Gary, Kevin Cooney, Stan Mathes, David Gillis, Windell Lamberson, Jim Gregory, Carlos Villarreal, Mike Miller, George Jarvis, Ron Wible, W.W. Worley, Michael Braden, Monty Heishman, Bill Malone, Clyde Miller, Concepcion Gonzalez, Conrad Kennedy, Michael Gregory, and Christopher Gillis. I hope I didn’t miss anyone but there were 395 archery attending this year’s event.
The 2002 NFAA national field championship will be held in Watkins Glen, N.Y. where the format will return to a five-day event: field, field, hunter, hunter, and animal. The past two years was an experimental three-day format.
A side story to this trip involves the rental car, a Pontiac Aztec that I aptly dubbed – BUV. It was one BUTT UGLY VEHICLE.
RWS