DECATUR, Alabama - Today concluded the U.S. National Target Championships and qualification for the Easton JOAD Nationals. After several storms yesterday left the afternoon line of archers several ends short of their 72 arrows, beautiful weather today led to some high scores on the field.
Brady Ellison shot a new national record with a 694 to take the National Champion title and the Shenk Award for highest cumulative score from U.S. Indoor, Field and Target National Championships. Ellison commented: "My shots felt good, they felt consistent, a couple of things I need to work out technically, but overall I'm happy with how I shot this weekend. I'm bummed that we didn't get to shoot all of our arrows last night; I think I would have shot 690 last night and shot in the 1380s for a double 70, which would have been pretty stout, but we had the weather when we could shoot."
Crispin Duenas won the senior recurve men's guest division. He shared that being at the U.S. National Target Championships is good practice for him as he prepares for his third Olympic Games this summer: "For me to come down to the States, it's always a good practice because you guys have really, really good shooters down here so it's really good practice for me run my mental game and my tournament prep and everything. To be able to do this so close to the Games and shows me exactly what I need to work on. I'm really glad to be able to have events like these to come out to and test myself against some of the world's best.
Crystal Gauvin won gold for the compound senior women and took the Easton Award for the highest cumulative compound women's score from U.S. Indoor, Field, and Target National Championships: "My shooting felt okay, I hadn't really felt very well the last few days. It's awesome to finally win gold at a National Championships event; I've gotten silver at six straight nationals: Indoor, Outdoor and Field, so to break that curse was awesome, and to get the Easton Award as well is pretty cool."
Andrew Park, recurve cub male winner of the Easton JOAD Nationals qualification shared: "It was a fairly good tournament for me. I ignored all of the scoring and way my teammates were shooting and just focused on my shot. That really helped me. You've got to risk it for the biscuit."
The winner of the barebow master men's division was Richard Barker. He was excited about the recent opportunities that became available for masters and barebow archers to make USAT teams: "It feels great, I'm happy with my performance but I'm sure I have room for improvement and I'm looking forward to continuing on with USA Archery and competing more in the future."
Mackenzie Brown took the win for the senior recurve women: "I'm really excited, I've been doing really well lately, I've kind of been shooting a little lower scores so it was really nice to come out today and shoot what I'm used to in practice. I really stuck with it, I had a couple of rough ends, but for me it's important to make sure I let go of that in my head and just go into the next end and not let it effect me and that's what I did today. I'm really happy with how it turned out."
Jesse Broadwater and LaNola Pritchard won the male Easton and female Shenk awards after both finishing 5th today. Braden Gellenthien won the compound male national champion title with a wide margin.
Competition continues tomorrow with the U.S. Open and eliminations for the Easton JOAD Nationals. The U.S. Open Finals will take place at 7pm at the Jack Allen Recreation Complex in Decatur, Alabama. Tickets are still available for purchase and there will be a live stream available on USA Archery's YouTube channel. Between the recurve and compound finals, the 2016 U.S. Olympic Men's Archery Team will compete in a friendly exhibition match with a team from Canada as we get ready to cheer on Team USA in Rio!
USA Archery shares our happiest congratulations with the winners of today's events. Complete results from today are available here. For more, follow USA Archery on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Photo by Freedom Light Productions.
< Back to All News
