Gator Cup 2013

Gator Cup 2013 was one heck of a shoot but I do it because I really love shooting FITA rounds and there's so few of them in my neck of the woods. I didn't shoot a particularly strong score at any distance except at 60 meters but apparently the winds were A LOT worse than what I thought.

Full suite of pictures from Gator Cup can be found here. 

 Picture courtesy of Teresa Iaconi... 30 meter follow-through. That was one explosive shot and that's how I love it! Bam! Of course, I don't know where that shot landed but it felt so good!

 Final score at the end of the day... And of course it was the *pink* sheet that was the most legible of the two score-sheets!

 Elimination match practice... I'm going against the lass in purple to my left.

 Setting up the shot and getting a rough calculation to see where to line up based on where my last shot went...

 Slowly getting to full draw and preparing to expand... that gold is going down!

 Analyzing the last shot and getting ready to take that gold down again...

 Full draw, about to hit expansion and release... that gold is going down!

 One of the ends in elimination... the other two shots were a little high... it was literally up, down, perfect! Best part was having some Olympic veterans witness this shot and going buggy-eyed at the bold longbow shooter pulling this stunt off!

 Me and my Canadian idol Crispin Duenas, who's also an absolute genius as well as a true target-slayer! I gotta admit... he's the archery equivalent of a training buddy at the gym I've dubbed the Alpha Wolf, minus the tendency to run around shirtless!

 Me and Khatuna Lorig, the 2013 Gator Cup gold medalist, 5x Olympian,master archer, and pretty much the real-life She-Ra but with a bow instead of a sword =)

 Me and Holly Stover, the 2013 Gator Cup silver medalist and fun person to watch as well as an amazing shot!

 Me and Lee Ford-Faherty, one of the toughest people I've ever met both physically and mentally. She also represented us in the 2012 Paralympics and is always fun to cross paths with!

Me and Michelle Gilbert, the 2013 Gator Cup bronze medalist, up-and-coming target-slayer, and engineering genius! She may be tiny but she packs one heck of a punch with that recurve of hers!

Lorikeets!

I found a whole bunch of pictures on my camera while killing time before Gator Cup starts up tomorrow... so I thought it would be fun just to share the good pictures to help with pre-tournament antsiness. There should be plenty of Gator Cup pictures coming up at the end of the weekend and if I place in the top 8, I'll also get to shoot at the USA Archery World Championship Team trials. Odds are extremely improbable given I'm doing the equivalent of going against a bunch of gun-slingers with Tae Kwon Do training by shooting a longbow against Olympic recurves, but one can hope and try, right? 

Besides wolves, coyotes, and raptors, I seem to have a bit of an affinity towards parrots too... and seems like they tend to like me, especially if I have something tasty or fun to chew on with me! And sometimes, I get to be the chew-toy, although I got lucky this time...

Lorikeets! They're an interesting type of nectar-eating parrot with tongues specifically adapted for eating nectar and act as pollinators. I don't remember what species they are though.

 Here's one posing for a nice picture.This one was more interested in investigating me than in the cup of fruit juice I had in my hand but s/he took a sip anyway before posing for more pictures with other visitors. I guess parrots can be a little vain too!

I made a new friend! This fellow here saw me with a fairly full cup and hopped onto my hand before I knew what was going on. S/he must've been really hungry because the cup certainly got emptied out! This little one here also followed me around a fair bit in the aviary while I was looking the other lorikeets.

More USIAC Pictures

All of these pictures are courtesy of the awesome Georgia Tech photographer, N. Posner, who also had a cool camera and a spiffy media vest that let him take some amazing pictures that the non-media folks couldn't quite take.

USIAC 2013... A Tale of Random Luck

Full suite of pictures here.

 The deadly trio of female barebow medalists. Wow, I'm the ogre among the three at least in build. I could probably tackle (or dead-lift or maybe even do a single push-press or a bench press) them if I wanted to...

 I really, really need to watch my eating habits and increase my physical activity a whole lot more... and I could work a lot on my form as well. I'm definitely going to have to hit the weights and WODs much more aggressively to get rid of all that blubber!

 Yes, I take a lot longer to shoot than my little apprentice...

 Whew... yeah... definitely could use a lot more CrossFit training and optimizing my nutrition even better. Heck, I should probably train like a body-builder as well to really get some real muscle in there!

 Team round with a pick-up team from University of Texas and Georgia Tech University. I think those academic hit-miss targets are a lot of fun!

Hit or miss? I actually liked going last of the three of us because I can either go snap-shooting if the first two are a bit slow or actually focus on a strong shot if the first two team-mates are fairly quick. Luckily my team-mates were pretty quick and gave me 45-55 seconds to get my two shots off.

I exploded! A really strong explosion in my back will often send my bow to the left as pinch my shoulder-blades further into my spine. Still trying to determine whether this style of release is better or if I should go for a uni-lateral "explosion" and my bow-arm scapula moving away from my spine.

I scored one of our points!

 More pictures came in courtesy of one of my fellow archers, both are from the qualification matches.

 

Inaugural Sunshine State Collegiate Cup 2013

 

Me on the line... for some reason I always take longer than the rest of my fellow bare-bows. Then again, I do need to let the lactic acid out and I need to do my best Raven (from the Teen Titans) impression between shots. The rest of my pictures can be found HERE

 

Archers of UF who shot at the Sunshine State Collegiate Cup. We had quite the impressive barebow contingent but we had all divisions represented -- barebow, Olympic recurve, compound freestyle, and compound bowhunter. 

 All of our collegiate archers, including the team from Georgia State University and Georgia Tech. Our guests represented all divisions but barebow.

 I took the gold medal for barebow as well as finishing the 72 arrow qualifying round in first place. It was a pretty close squeaker but I managed to pull it off somehow!