YANKTON, South Dakota - Individual eliminations at the World Archery Indoor Championships today saw U.S. juniors continue to dominate competition and earn spots in this weekend's medal matches.
Cassidy Cox, labeled yesterday by World Archery as a one-to-watch, had the qualification come back of the day jumping from 10th to 2nd in just a few ends. As she built confidence and found her zone, Cox was on fire, shooting some of the highest scores on the field. Cox already has team gold and bronze outdoor world youth championship titles to her resume, and is the reigning indoor youth silver medalist individually.
After 4th and 9th place finishes in the past Indoor World Cup season, and 7th place finishes at the Indoor Final and Vegas Shoot last weekend, Cox is fired up and hungry for gold. She solidly cleaned her matches today and taking the semifinal win by 6 points. "I was actually more nervous today than I was yesterday because making it all the way through my matches was something I really wanted," commented Cox. "Last time I shot at Indoor World Championships I made it to the gold medal match but unfortunately I came away with silver following a mishap with my arrow coming off my rest during the match, so winning this tournament has been a goal I set for myself ever since then."
Coach George Ryals IV was on the compound junior men's range for much of the day and summarized: "We knew going into it that we were most likely going to get a spot in the medal match, we just didn't know who, or which medal and they shot really hard. Zac [Harris} got upset by the 12th seed after he forgot his lucky coin, and Curtis [Broadnax] and Charles Ethan [King] went all the way down to decide who would go to the gold medal match."
Broadnax and King went head to head in the semifinals, with Broadnax taking the win 148-144, so both with have a shot at the podium in Monday's finals. "Today, the matches went alright because I made it through, but I was actually more nervous than I normally am," shared Broadnax. "My first two matches I was still shaken up, I don't know why, but then I finally calmed down and my shots were breaking cleaner."
Broadnax has shared all week that having the current indoor and outdoor World Champion titles to his name would mean a lot. One step closer to achieving that goal, Broadnax is also focused on team gold and the team elimination matches tomorrow. "Our team is very strong. Yesterday in qualification we were ahead 14 points, so I feel very strongly that we can work together and shoot great scores."
Adam Heidt was the sole U.S. recurve archer to pass the quarterfinals. The junior, who also has a reigning team world champion title to his name, cleaned through to the semifinals. Splitting the first two sets with the top seeded archer, he eventually conceded the match and will shoot for bronze.
Shooting as a senior, Jack Williams also had a strong run today, climbing from a 17th place seed to upset the top ranked archer, Yuki Kawata 6-2 with almost straight sets of 30s before falling to Canadian Olympian Crispin Duenas in a hard fought match and one arrow shoot off.
On the compound senior men's side, the U.S. men were bracketed well, qualifying 1st, 2nd and 3rd, but with the level of competition in the top 16 archers, it was easily anyone's game. Top two seeds, Kris Schaff and Tate Morgan cleaned their first matches with perfect 150s. In the quarterfinals, Jesse Broadwater scored a 150 too to advance. Morgan lost a shoot off to Italy's Sergio Pagni, who then faced Broadwater in the semifinals. With the pressure high, Pagni took the win while Schaff and the Netherlands' Schloesser went to a shoot off after a tied match. Schloesser was victorious, meaning Schaff and Broadwater will face off for bronze in the finals.
Competition resumes tomorrow with team elimination matches. Follow live results at www.worldarchery.org. For more, follow USA Archery on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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