Bella Otter displays her archery targets and gold medal won at the 2023 State Championships in Tulare. Contributed Photo

arrows, a new arrow set up from a company that I was previously unfamiliar with as far as I hadn’t used their prod-

TEMPLETON

For full details on games, locations, etc. please visit: templetonhs.schoolloop.com/Athletics ucts or anything like that,” she said. “In the fall, I ended up trying out some of their arrows and felt like I really connected with them, and they were super. My biggest two things with companies are do they make a product I can

ATASCADERO

For full details on games, locations, etc. please visit: atascaderousd.cyberschool.com/AHS/Department/32-Athletics

Taylor is our leading scorer and team captain; she always puts her team first.”

Shawn Koehler win with, and are they super cool people that I can really represent? They immediately checked both of those boxes, and so I was super excited to show up on the scene and be shooting these new arrows in a tournament setting for the first time.”

The first day of the competition, Friday, Jan. 6, was Junior Olympic Archery Development (JOAD). Anyone in the under-21 division could compete, but there were no senior competitions on the JOAD day.

“That day, I ended up, right out of the gate, shooting my highest indoor score that I’ve ever shot at a tournament,” Otter said. “By the end of that day, with that new high score, I ended up beating my previous state record from 2021 in the 18 meters. Just the single round of 30 arrows at 18 meters.”

Otter also broke her own record in the FITA (the world governing body of archery) round, which is two rounds of 30 arrows each, for a total of 600 while at the 2023 State Championships. On Saturday, Jan. 7, Otter also competed in two 300 rounds, shooting 30 arrows in each.

“On Saturday, I again posted two super super consistent high scores, which I felt really good about,” she said. “It makes it a lot more fun when you’re just feeling really confident in your equipment, and you’re really feeling confident in the effort that you’ve put into dialing it in. And so to be able to show up and then to be shooting consistently scores that I was really happy with just made me all the more stoked.”

Otter went on to say that it

Week of February 2 -8

PASO was the same story on Sunday, Jan. 8.

“It was just a weekend overall of consistency that I really liked,” she added. “That’s what I was really looking for, and again just getting good clarity about all the progress that I’ve made and stuff that still can be improved upon.”

At the end of the tournament, Otter had broken another record for the 18-meter that was previously set 13 years ago, in 2010, by Paige Pierce.

“She is currently the number-one-ranked female archer in the United States. She came from California, and she’s still going strong,” Otter stated. “She’s so rad. She’s currently ranked number one in the national rankings system for archery. And I’ve shot with her before, been with her up on the line, and she’s one of those people who is so easily a role model, and so it’s cool to be able to have role models like that.”

Otter also ended up beating the record for the Double FITA, which is all four 300 rounds combined from Saturday and Sunday, by 11 points.

“Most of these things are typically broken by a point or hardly ever more than five,” added Otter.

Next, Otter will compete in the Lancaster Archery Classic in Pennsylvania on the weekend of Jan. 27 and will follow that up with The Vegas Shoot in Las Vegas, Nevada, the first weekend of February, which is the biggest tournament of the entire year.

You can follow Otter’s archery adventures through her Instagram: @bella.otter. archery.

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