NTU Institutional Shoot yesterday... quite a good day for NUS in general, except for a few glitches here and there.

The first thing that *almost* went wrong was that my name was NOT on the list for the Individual Standard Class event, although I was registered for the Standard Class Team event. So that doesn't really make sense, coz you have to take part in the individual event to be able to take part in the team event.

Anyway, everything ended up all right, coz Grace had withdrawn (sorta), so I could take her place.

My lane detail was 12D; each lane had six archers, A to F, and they'd shoot in two details: A, B and C would shoot first, take their score and retrieve their arrows, and then D, E and F would shoot and do the same. It was widely agreed that it was SO much more organised than the AAS Shoot, which was not only disorganised with a lot of last minute changes, but also very crammed. That's saying something, considering that this shoot was organised by a school, while AAS is a national organisation. For shame. -_-||

Anyway, it turned out that in my detail, Vincent was 12F. This was a good thing. Coz I asked Vince which angle he shot best from (left, centre or right) and he said the left, so I told him, "Okay, so when you step up to the shooting line later, can you step up to the left so that the centre and right are open for me? Coz I can't shoot from the left!"

He agreed, so all was well, haha. :D

During the sighting round, I think we scared the poor SP guy who was shooting in the same detail as us. :P Vince's and my arrows all landed within the red (except for one of mine which landed in the blue :P), while a good number of the SP guy's were in the black. :P

But Vince and I were quite happy, anyway; it was a pretty good start. :)

And training with the 80 cm target seemed to have really paid off: I scored a personal best of 298 out of 360 with the 122 cm target, a VERY significant improvement from the last time that I shot with a 122 cm target, which was during the NUS internal competition, and I had a score of 257 then.

It turned out that after that first half of the competition, I was ranked fifth out of all the girls, and first among the NUS Standard Class girls.

But then came the 80 cm target.

Backtrack a little; lemme explain this.

First, the basics: in archery, shooting one "set" of arrows is called an "end". That settled, the Standard Class Shoot involves shooting from the 30 m line; first, 6 ends of 6 arrows at a 122 cm target, and then, 6 ends of 6 arrows at a 80 cm target.

Now you understand why I've been training with a 80 cm target all this time? Yep; because it makes sense that if you can do well with a smaller target, you should be all right with a larger one.

That's what most of us did, anyway; but what we hadn't counted on was the possible psychological factor of seeing our target visibly reduced from a 122 cm diameter one to an 80 cm one.

I mean, in school, we'd just train with the 80, no biggie. And my personal best during training with the 80 was 275. But during the competition, seeing your target being replaced by a much smaller one-- after you've been shooting with the bigger one for the better part of the morning-- does something to you psychologically, I tell you. It makes it very different from if you'd been shooting with the 80 all the while.

So, my score on the 80 dropped to 243. However, that was still enough to give me a total score of 541 out of 720, and I still maintained my fifth place ranking.

But here's what I noticed on the ranking sheet: the top three girls all had scores in excess of 560. The fourth-placed girl had a score of 548, and I had my 541. See the huge difference between third and fourth place?? And after me, the sixth-placed girl's score was only about 520. Another big difference.

Anyway, it was some time before I realised that really, 560-plus out of 720 isn't really that great of a score either. There's still about 160 missing points, after all.

Which means, that if I can train till I manage to hit 50 and above for every end, that'll result in a total score of at least 600, which will definitely put me at the top of the table; for that matter of fact, it'll put anyone who manages it at the top of the table for sure.

*Thinks*

*Glances at calendar*

NUS Outdoor Open is on the 13th of March. Plenty of time. *Greedy little gleeful grin* :P

Ambition shall be thy downfall. :P But it never hurt to try, so heck, why not?! :D

My beloved bow and arrows have not let me down... :D Which reminds me; maybe I should change my darling bow's name. It's not really hitting me all that much anymore after I've corrected my form, so "Bloodsucker" isn't really an appropriate name for it. :P

Suggestions for a good and um... auspicious (not sure if that should be the word, but that's the closest I can come to what I'm thinking of) name for my darling bow? :D Please use the tagboard to your left.. :D