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| Volume XXV, Number 9 | July 2, 2004 |
By Felix DoBosz
TALLAHASSEE, FL — This year, the twenty-fifth Florida Sunshine State Games were held in Tallahassee and local surrounding areas. The archery events were staged on June 19–20 at Eleanor Klapp-Phipps Park, just a few miles north of Florida’s capital. In this large wooded meadow, Seminole Archery Coach John Waterhouse directed his five-member team to winning gold medals in the 3-D form competition.
The five archers representing the Seminole Tribe in this year’s Sunshine State Games were Wanda Bowers and her 15-year-old son, Casey McCall, Joel Frank, Joey Richardson, and Don Osceola.
In between shooting rounds, Wanda Bowers said, “We [her and her son] started shooting just last August and really enjoy this sports event together.”
Tribal citizen Joel Frank scored a perfect 12 points on target number six, a 3-D form three foot Alligator, now, that was a bulls-eye.
Joel said happily, “I really enjoy shooting outdoors and meeting new and interesting people; everyone here has a good time with the camaraderie… for a fun day of competition.”
These archers were competing along with about two-dozen other competitors in shooting 15 different 3-D form target animals. The targets are made of tough rubberized foam to resemble many animals such as deer, bears, leopards, and alligators. Coach Waterhouse has been teaching the fine skills of archery to the tribe for the past three years, along with his assistant coach, Steve Young.
“ It takes an awful lot of practice, sometimes as much as 10 hours per week,” said Waterhouse. “Mimicking the hunting experience; it’s more of a challenge when using a bow and arrow.”
According to Waterhouse, there are different kinds of bows used in this competition, some ranging in price from $300 to more than $800, and that’s not counting all the accessories, such as sight scopes and weight stabilizers that attach to the customized bows. This can easily escalate costs to several hundred dollars or more depending on design and construction materials.
Of course you need to have specialized arrows, some made of light synthetic carbon compounds or milled aluminum with target tips. These arrows range in prices from $15 each to more than $50. Depending on quality, arrows can be re-used many times over a period of time before having to be replaced.
From 19 yards away each archer takes a turn to shoot, and figures out their score by how close to the inner ring the arrow hits. A points award system consists of 12 points for a bulls-eye, the outer rings are 10, 8, 5 and 0 points for a miss. Each archer got 15 targets and two rounds to shoot, so a perfect score for the 3-D form course competition would be 360 points.
It was getting really hot, muggy and buggy on the 3-D course as the warm morning sun gave way to the afternoon heat wave. Archers were sometimes lucky to find those graceful oak trees with draping Spanish moss offering a little shade from those powerful Florida sunshine rays as our archers continued to focus in on the road to gold.
The scores were finally tallied up at the conclusion of the tournament. Each one of the competitors representing the Seminole Tribe of Florida won a gold medal in their respective category. Congratulations to all the winners that participated in this year’s Florida Sunshine games in archery.
There will be another archery competition in Orlando later in October. See you next year in 2005, when the games will be held in Broward County. A special thanks to Coach Steve Young for his assistance in with this story.
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