State JOAD

Remember how last Saturday we spent the day at the Science Olympiad State Tournament? Well, this Saturday, I spent the day at the Colorado JOAD State Tournament (technically, it's the Indoor Rotational Finals, but we all call it the state tournament, as it's the culmination of the JOAD season and was officially called the state tournament up until this year apparently).

Though the first line of shooters showed up at 7am, I arrived at 10 to be on hand for the day to help with scoring and verifying eligibility and winners for a couple different programs that I volunteer to keep stats for throughout the season...which meant (similar to last week) periods of sitting and chatting interspersed with periods of extreme busyness. ;) 

(Meanwhile, Nathan took Asher and Micah to demo team practice then Micah's black belt candidate weapons form check. After they got back home, he met with the sprinkler repair folks to dig up a valve in the backyard to fix one of our sprinkler system zones and also got the lawnmower tuned up for the season.)

Anyhow...there were three lines of shooters throughout the day. Noah's age group was assigned to the last line of the day, scheduled to start shooting at 4pm. Rather than make him sit with me all day there, Nathan graciously drove Noah down around 3:30 (before returning home, himself). Due to a build up of running a bit behind, Noah's line didn't start shooting until 5:20...and we finally left there at 9:30...getting home (after stopping briefly for food) around 11pm.

Here's a bit less than half of the shooters during Noah's time:

Noah's third-ish from the far end...in the bright blue jersey. You can probably tell that the groups assigned to this line were the older kids...which was truly a pleasure to watch. These kids have been doing this for years and just plain enjoy what they're doing and the people they're doing it with (for the most part). Also, after having watched the younger kids (who admittedly are cuter and more enthusiastic), it was just so nice to watch people who knew how to do their math, lol. (Don't get me started on the state of math in the United States these days...)

And. As I've mentioned before, Noah switched from shooting compound bow (which he's been competing in since we started JOAD back in January of 2012) to barebow for this tournament. The overall scores were lower but the change of pace was more than welcome.

And...he took home FIRST PLACE from the state tournament!

And even let me take his picture. :)

And, in the process, he also managed to set TWO NEW STATE RECORDS in the Junior Barebow Male division (both for a single round score and for the combined score--they shoot two rounds at each tournament).

Whew. 

Thus concluded our 2016-2017 JOAD season. :) We'll have a team wrap up/get together soon and then will be done until fall. Woohoo! 

Comments

[Nancy]

Congratulations to Noah! Quite an accomplishment!