AAS Shoot is over!! Yay...! :D

So now I'm DAMN tired and sleepy and feeling slightly flu-ish thanks to the damn lousy weather over the last three days while I was out in the open, and also probably because it's kinda cold over here right now, where I live.

Seriously, the weather was terrible. AAS's Jurong range is, for all effects and purposes, a temporary range, coz DM Archery had to relocate there temporarily while SAFRA moves from Bukit Merah to bloody TAMPINES of all places. Nothing against Tampines, but it's just damn FAR from ANYWHERE!! So, since it was a temporary range, there wasn't really adequate shelter, and the all the tarpaulin that they'd managed to string up as shelters just sloshed down a whole lot of water at some points during really heavy rain, when it just couldn't hold all the water anymore.

So it went on like that for two and a half days; it started raining halfway through sighting on Friday, then it rained after the first half of the standard class shoot on Saturday, and then on Sunday, it rained before we even got started and rained AGAIN when the whole thing had ended.

Shitty weather; when it rains, it's damn cold, and then when it stops, it's warmer than ever coz when the sun comes back out, you've got all the humidity to deal with, what with all the puddles of water, and plus, the range is set up on an old tennis court, and tennis courts reflect a HELL of a lot of heat.

With all that crap, I won't be surprised if I fall sick. But I seriously hope I don't. I have NEVER been sick more than once in the space of one year. For that matter, I've never been sick more than once within the space of THREE years. I generally have a better constitution than both my sisters; why, I'm not certain. All I know is that they're supposedly allergic to a lot of things that mean nothing to me, and that they both had plenty more infections and whatnot than I did while they were growing up.

So what usually happens for me is that every three years or so, when a new kind of flu virus develops, someone in my household will catch it, and I'll invariably get wind of it (literally); I'll be sick for a few days or so, but nothing that I can't get rid of with a little running around. After that, I'm back to normal, and the "three-year-cycle" repeats itself. I don't want to break my record! I know what they say about there being a first time for everything, but really, I believe that "first time" can wait till I'm out in the working world and I can finally make full use of the all-powerful "Medical Certificate". :P

All that aside, AAS Shoot was fun... except for some casualties.

Casualty number one: as early on as before the second end, Jianwu suddenly shouted over to Rayner that Imy's eye was bleeding. Rayner, myself, Angel and Huiting immediately rushed over to Imy's lane, where most of the juniors had already crowded along with some of the judges, and we found out that she had a cut just above her eye, and that it wasn't her eye itself that was bleeding. Was pretty damn scary though; when I first caught a glimpse of her, she was pulling away the tissue that she'd pressed to her eye, and it came away with a splotch of red on it. Apparently, while retrieving her arrows, she'd accidentally walked into the arrows on the lower target face, and the nocks cut her, I suppose. They sent her to the nearby clinic and she returned later, quite all right and they let her make-up the ends that she'd missed.

Second casualty: well, okay, maybe not really a "casualty", but close enough. During the second half of the standard class shoot, Rayner almost dropped his bow, but managed to catch hold of it just in time; sweaty palms. Being in the lane just next to him, I exchanged a wide-eyed glance with him that said "Thank goodness..."

But then, just as we shot our arrows for that end, someone else's bow actually DID fly out into the shooting area and land on the floor. When the end was over, we found out that it was Jianwu's. Jianwu's another case of sweaty palms, and in this case, the other half of the sight had gotten bent when it landed on the ground. He was lucky that it was just the screw on the other end, and not the sight itself.

Anyway, one thing I learned: it's easier to get stressed in team events than in individual events.

All the seniors warned us about getting stressed because of so many people watching us and whatnot, but really, throughout the individual shoot yesterday, I didn't feel a thing. I felt nothing from the time I set up my bow, right up till the time I shot my last arrow.

We realised later that, really, you hardly notice the "audience". Because when you're shooting, you concentrate mostly on the target board, and even when you load an arrow, you'll turn back, but you'll just be looking at the arrows as you take one out, not at the "audience". That is, if you turn back at all. Some people don't turn back.

Speaking of the "audience"; one odd thing (among others) that the other juniors and myself noted yesterday was that in archery, almost ALL the spectators are also competitors. I.e: they're watching to see how well/ badly you do.

It's also another "quiet" sport; make too much noise while shooting's going on and some group of people will definitely make a loud shushing noise.

It's different from things like golf, though; in archery, you have the time to mingle around and talk to your fellow compeitors (if you want to) while you're collecting your arrows and taking your scores and when you're not shooting. Although I suppose this doesn't really apply in most professional competitions; like say, in the Olympics-- they've people to retrieve their arrows and take their score for them, and I doubt that they waste any time on idle chit-chat.

Also, given that the archery cirle in Singapore is relatively small, it's almost like everyone knows everyone else. To start with, given the small pool that they can draw from, there're archers from the national team in almost every tertiary institution. We have Alvin and Kenneth (and probably some other seniors that I'm not aware of..), SP has the SEA Games silver medallist (think his name was Albert Loh), and so on. Then, at these kinds of competitions when everyone mingles around, everyone gets to know someone knew and check out the competition all at the same time; Weizheng and I were already taking note of the hotshots that NTU fielded, during the awards presentation.

One thing that amused me to no end in this competition however, was one of our seniors, Benson, this guy who always sounds really experienced and wise with his advice (and it works), and his twin brother.

We never knew that Benson had a twin brother till Friday, when we were at Boon Lay Interchange waiting for 178. We were all hanging around just outside the queuing line, when Benson, another guy who looked freakily like him, and a girl came up and stepped into the line.

It took a while for most of the juniors to realise that they looked almost exactly alike.

So I went up to Khim Nyang and asked if that was Benson's twin or something and got a nod in return; they are, in Shiling's words "so disgustingly alike, I can't stand it".

They dress the same way: they wear the same shorts, the same shoes, wear identical pairs of sunglasses; their hairstyle is the same, and their hair is even dyed the same way in the same colour.

The only way we could tell them apart at first was by the shirts that they wore.

See, Benson's from NUS. His brother's from NTU. So all you had to do, from Saturday onwards, was look at the shirt to tell if it was Benson or his brother you were looking at.

The fact that the two of them are from rival schools here is just part of what made it all so amusing for all of us; on the first day during the open class shoot, Benson and his brother somehow got allocated to the same lane-- Benson was on target 2B and his brother was on 2D. For the juniors who stayed to watch the seniors shoot, we were somewhat fascinated by the continuous string of yellow and red hits that the Benson twins (what we came to call them, since we didn't find out his brother's name till the end of the first day and it was getting rather tiring to say "Benson and his brother" all the time) and some of the other archers were scoring. Especially people like the SEA Games silver medallist on target 14B, whose three arrows almost always looked like ONE thick arrow from where we were. That's how damn tight his grouping was. O_O

The next day, in the standard class knockout shoot, Rayner was up against this guy from NTU, and they were in Lane 16, the rightmost lane. Now this is the funny part. What happened was that while they were shooting, Benson was on the left, behind Rayner, coaching him and telling him where to shift his aim to, and on the right, his brother, Henry, was doing the exact same thing for the NTU guy. I would've dropped to the floor laughing if it hadn't been a serious distraction at that time. :D :P

After that, in the open class knockout shoot, the twins ended up pitted against each other, so they were both shooting at the same time, in the same lane, and I'm telling you, from the far end of the range, the similarity was once again absolutely stunning. I mean.. wow. Really freaky. I actually wanted to go over and see if the atmosphere in that lane was slightly different from all the other lanes, since they're brothers and all, haha. But when I saw the crowd and the mess of bowstands and bows that I'd have to pick my way through to get to Lane 7 (their lane), I decided against it.

Then, standard class team event. My team was next to an NTU team, and we were in Lane 16. Rightmost lane, so guess what happened?

Yep. Repeat of the standard class knockout shoot. Benson was giving encouragement and so on to myself and my teammates, Shiling and Angel, while I could hear Henry doing the same to the left. Only way I could tell who to listen to was by listening to the direction that the voice was coming from, hahaha.... :D

Remember how I said that I found the team event much more stressful? That's because with the individual event, whatever happens is your problem; if you shot badly, that's your problem; if you shot well, then good for you; in a team however, shooting badly means that you pull the whole team down. There's the pressure to perform there. And what's worse is that you really CAN'T panic, or you'll make the rest of your teammates panic as well, and then everything really will go to hell.

Shiling was working herself up nicely no matter how much I tried to calm her down the whole day, and Angel kept talking about getting "butterflies" just before the event started, so bloody hell, despite how badly I wanted to scream at someone (I specifically had the NTU people in the next lane in mind), I had to make nice with the stupid stress bug and smile and keep telling them to relax and cracking lame jokes because me panicking wouldn't have done anything. I'd probably have worked myself into a fit if I'd got started down that road, anyway.

Boy did it come back full force when we started the first round; I'd agreed to be the last shooter since I shoot quite fast and I didn't think that I'd get stressed as easily as the two of them. What happened was Angel went first, and her first arrow hit the red in the upper target face.

That may sound like a good thing to you.

Not when we'd decided beforehand that Shiling would take the bottom-left target face, Angel would take the bottom-right face, and I would take the top face because I don't fare well with a low target face.

This means that Angel's arrow had gone off, and now she'd have to aim for the upper target face, which means that either way, I was stuck with shooting a lower target face.

Then Shiling went, and she was so stressed that you could see it. All the seniors were clusted around, and even myself and Angel were telling her to relax, and above it all, Benson's voice was ringing out, constantly telling her to "man man lai (take it slow), relax, focus".

It got to the point, however, that I was twiddling with my arrow fletches while my gaze was alternating between her and the clock. I could hear my own heartbeat while the clock merrily counted down from 70+ seconds to slightly over 60 seconds.

I had about a minute to shoot 3 arrows, with a triple-face target, which none of us had trained with before! ARGH... was so gonna panic right then and there.

Surprisingly, that first end of mine was all right; scored an 8 and a 7, but my last arrow missed and landed in the upper target face, right next to Angel's first arrow. Found out later that Angel and I had aimed at the same place, and our arrows had both gone off.

My final end was bad though; 3 Ms. And the final score was 108; the NTU team next to us got 120. Considering that we were only 12 points away, that's all right, I guess. But when you consider that if I'd actually scored something that last end, our score would've been higher and we might've been higher in the rankings.. maybe even high enough to go on to the next round... well, that just sucks, really.

And since that NTU team went on to the finals, we probably *were* close enough.

Oh well. No use thinking about that now... next competition is January 29th! Training, training, training... :D