Savannah Tovar, March-Before every tournament, my team huddles up. Together, we always remind ourselves to do what we know and to have fun. Whether it is a bullseye tournament or a 3D tournament, we always gather around. With one another, we hold hands and pray.
Some archers have a goal of getting a personal best in tournaments. Others just want to shoot on the target or even shoot within a certain color range. Coaches often hope to place in the tournament and see improvement within their archers. Now that I am on a new team being a freshman in high school, I see a difference between my high school team and my grade school team. Both teams are good, and like many teams, both teams really want to win. My high school team places a lot of emphasis on teamwork. After all, teamwork makes the dream work.
My coaches and team members have all displayed that teamwork is essential in a successful team. Although success is a very vague term, no matter what the goal, every team can be successful in their very own way. With team scores oftentimes in the thousands, every point matters. Many times teams either win or lose by only a few points. When shooting, some weeks are better than others and not every time archers will improve, but that is where teammates come in. In my experience, most weeks I shoot close to a personal best, but I don’t achieve many of them. Not everyone will have a good score, but not everyone will have a bad score. Team members have each other’s back’s. Teams are extremely important, without them, then there might be less friendly competition, less of an incentive to improve, and more.
Teams are also very important because they challenge not only me to improve, but many other archers. Now, unfortunately I don’t improve every week, but my fellow archers motivate me to try harder and reach my goals. This friendly competition is good for everyone. Sometimes I challenge my little brother or a friend to see who can score better. I do have to give my little brother some grace since this is only his 2nd year shooting archery, but he is a pretty good archer with a personal best of 265 in bullseye. This little competition is definitely incentivizing him to try to win. While we might be on two different teams, this friendly challenge can also help archers to improve their shot.
What makes teams successful is not only the archer’s scores, but the coaches. A team not only consists of archers but the coaches too. The coaches lead the archers to grow and continue to have fun. My goal is to improve from week to week on my score. My coaches guide me to improve by catching my mistakes of suggesting things I can change so I can hopefully do better. Sometimes I don’t quite understand what my coaches want me to change, but I just keep on practicing.
To conclude, I think that every team should talk about their team and strive to work better together. Do the students and coaches work together to win tournaments or is it just the individuals? Each team in order to succeed needs to rely on each other to step up for the team to shoot great, not just a few great archers. Work together to succeed, after all, teamwork makes the dream work.