Schaff’s 598 leads US compound men to top Yankton qualification

Indoor Archery World Cup silver medallist Kris Schaff scored 598 out of a possible 600 points over the 60-arrow 18-metre ranking round to lead the compound men’s field at the 2018 World Archery Indoor Championships in Yankton, South Dakota, and a US trio that dropped just eight points between them through qualifying.

“It went really well. The first half I shot a 299. The one I missed kinda just woke me up a little bit. I was kinda on cruise control,” said Kris.

Landing a pair of 299s, Schaff was followed in the ranking list by teammates Tate Morgan and Jesse Broadwater with 597 each. Mike Schloesser, of the Netherlands, also had 597.

“Feeling good about it [this week]. Just trying to keep it rolling! Anyone here is capable of shooting 150 points at any time,” said Schaff.

Reigning Indoor Archery World Cup Champion Broadwater was the only compound man to shoot a perfect 300 points through the first 30 arrows of qualification, but then dropped three in the second half.

“I’m feeling okay. Had a good first half out there but I don’t know, I’m thinking about all that’s going on in Florida, my home state, and I just can’t get that off my mind,” said Jesse, referring to the tragic school shooting.

“Maybe that’s a good thing to keep me from getting nervous, but I have young kids of my own so I feel bad for them.”

Schaff, Broadwater and Morgan ranked first as a team with a combined score of 1792 points, 11 more than Italy in second and 18 ahead of France in third.

“We all shot really good as a team, so I feel confident that we are going to have a good show here and we all should be pretty good individually, too,” added Jesse.

All of the top three compound women – Linda Ochoa-Anderson, Tanja Jensen and Sarah Prieels – finished with 594 points, shooting 54 10s and six nines, leaving the coin toss system to automatically decide the ranking positions between them.

In the end, it was Linda, who finished second at The Vegas Shoot only four days ago, who came on top.

“In Vegas, the last day I felt great and that gave me confidence coming here. I was only one X away from winning, but I didn’t let that affect me because I knew I had this event,” said Linda, smiling.

“I always expect to go from less to more. I try to shoot a good qualification and then focus on the rounds because they matter a lot. Qualification is the warm up and my goal is to make my shooting stronger in the elimination matches. I think I need to be more aggressive and confident in matchplay.”

Linda, Jensen and Prieels all received a bye into the second round.

Italian archers Jesse Sut and Elisa Roner led the compound junior men and women’s ranking rounds, respectively.

The 2018 World Archery Indoor Championships takes place in Yankton, USA on 14-19 February.