…Continued from the previous post.

It’s pretty easy to see how archery came into existence as a sport.

Long, long ago, in a time that predates even ESPN, people had to eat. They noticed that animals that just might fill that express need seemed to be running by with regularity. Somebody decided to take a curved tree limb, stretch some twine between its ends and use it to propel pointy sticks at these animals.

Poof. Instant supper. After which they invented beer to wash it down.

Naturally there emerged some down time between animals running by, so the enterprising among these folks began to proactively venture out after them. They decided to call it hunting. Somewhere in there green tights and pointy leather hats came into vogue, but that’s a different story.

Here’s the point. In every group of people there’s inevitably somebody who says something like “I bet I can shoot my pointy stick closer to the middle of that tree over there than you can.” In this particular case, that guy’s name was Archie.

I’m really, really sorry, but you have to admit it – that joke was just sitting there for somebody to use.
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There are perfect days and then there are perfect days. And one notch ahead of that was the day that I found myself at the ARCO Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, CA to witness the USA Archery SoCal Showdown tournament.

It was amazing to consider that I had been at another Olympic training facility just two weeks prior to that, and the environment couldn’t have been any more different. At the Bethesda Center of Excellence a drizzly morning and the mist rising from steam-heated water gushing down the whitewater river course combined to provide an almost surreal backdrop to the Canoe/Kayak Nationals.

At Chula Vista, it was brilliantly sunny and warm, with literally not a cloud in the sky. A very slight cooling breeze topped off the kind of day that needed no studio retouching to go directly to a Chamber of Commerce highlight reel.
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