Letisia Carranza, March – 11/16/2018 was the first tournament for him. Excited to shoot, whistle blows two times, he grabs his bow and walks to the shooting line places the cam on the top of his shoes. Whistle blows once. Every archery lifted their bow and sounds of arrows making contact with the targets filled the gym, arrows hitting the floor, and repeated over again. Miguel Mullins placing 19th. That tournament he learned from and a year later, placed 3rd. His first medal. Four years later, his highest score in middle school was a 250, and now his highest score in high school is 279 placing 6th and 6th place overall boys.
I have been watching my brother shoot and all I wanted to do was pick up a bow already and shoot. I found it quite fascinating to see him shoot, how the arrow hits the target, and just to hold one in my hand and draw it back was interesting to me. Of course when I first joined archery, my brother and I would bicker even though he was on the middle team and I was on the elementary team. He’s now on the high school team and I’m on the middle school team.
I liked how cool it made people look and how fun it would be just to hit a target. I do believe he has some part of inspiring me to join archery. Most of the time I had to go to his tournaments, which interested me once I started paying attention to it. I wished our school would lower the grade to 3rd since I was so impatient to join, but by the size of the 3rd grader, I see why that had it at 4th grade.
Sometimes him and I would play games during the tournaments if he was in a good mood. If I got in my head he would try to get me out of my head. Sometimes, if I shot below 40, he would make me smell his hat, which stinks and smells like his sweat! Of course, as brothers and sisters we would bicker a lot during the tournament sometimes during practice too, if he came early.
To be honest, I wished that I paid more attention the first time I went to his tournament. I would have seen archery sooner and I would’ve wanted to join this sport earlier. Now my sister, Rosalina, is on the elementary team, and if we combine the elementary team with middle school, her and I would bicker a lot but I believe that Rosalina was inspired by me. My youngest sister, Araceli, will be inspired by Rosalina, and so now it repeats. Now mom will have four bows in her car like all of the time.
I hope that no matter what sport you do and if you have sibling or not, one day, even if you don’t know it, you can inspire someone who may be younger than you or older than you.
