Seymour High School archery team set for state

Each archery year at Seymour High School has been different for head coach Jill Purkhiser.

This is the eighth year for the program, and each team has had a different makeup.

One thing has remained constant, though: The Owls have qualified for the state, national and world tournaments.

The first of those accomplishments — state — has been checked off for the 2022-23 season. The Owls hosted the Seymour Invitational, a state qualifier tournament, on Jan. 28 and scored 3,249, placing second.

That score advanced them to the Indiana National Archery in the Schools Program State Bullseye Tournament on Saturday at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis.

“A lot of people don’t realize the success that this archery team has had since we started, and we’ve never missed a state tournament. I’m pretty proud of that,” Purkhiser said. “But the other thing I’m proud of is I’ve got 100% graduation rate. That’s just as important.”

Seymour has some interesting dynamics this year among its 40-plus archers. Purkhiser said there are four different languages or dialects spoken on the team, and freshmen who participated in Seymour Middle School’s inaugural archery season last year have come in and contributed in a big way.

“The team is being driven right now by the freshmen. The freshmen who have come in from the middle school are really breathing life into this team,” Purkhiser said. “These kids shot at the middle school program last year, and they picked it up and they’ve walked right in this year and just made an impact immediately.”

A couple of weekends ago during a tournament at SMS, freshman Gavin Wessel won with 280. A perfect score in archery is 300. Senior Jacob Jones was next with 279, and freshman Alejandro Perez shot 277.

“My freshmen are the new life in here,” Purkhiser said. “Seeing them excel, seeing them shoot their first 50s, seeing them compete against each other, I just love it. That’s so much fun. To have that inner competition is fun, and that’s exactly what they are doing. They are bringing it. It gives me a lot more hope for the team in the future.”

That’s not to say the experienced archers haven’t made an impact. They’ve seen their own improvements.

Jones and fellow seniors Jessica Hougland and Naima Rocha said practice has paid off for them when it comes to competitions.

“I’ve jumped a whole lot, broken two personal bests so far, really just dialed in this year and focused more at practice,” Jones said. “I’ve always tried to focus in more every year and get better, which I’ve done, and this year just really capped it.”

Hougland said she also set new personal bests.

“I feel like I focused in more at 15 (meters) especially and got more consistent and accurate throughout the year,” she said.

Rocha has broken two of her personal bests, which she credits to practicing shooting more and getting the right ending form.

The newcomers have seen progress, too. In the season-opening tournament that served as the state qualifier, Wessel shot 258.

“I didn’t shoot that well at the start of the year. Now, I’m really shooting 270s and just broke 280,” he said. “I like the jump, and then my friends have really started to get better. Like Brian (Westmoreland), he has grown a lot since the start of the year, and he has gotten a lot better.”

Between the upperclassmen and coaches, Wessel said he has received support along the way.

“You can pick up little things from (the upperclassmen) and see how to improve yourself,” he said. “(The coaches) will come up and watch you, and if they notice any little thing, they can tell you about it, and you can just build from that and get better.”

This season, Team 1 and Team 2 placed second and third, respectively, in their opener, and Team 1 placed first in its other two competitions.

The state qualifier was the first time a lot of the kids had shot in a tournament, Purkhiser said.

“I was pleasantly surprised with our number. They shot about 60 points better than what they had been in practice, and so that’s an absolute great jump,” she said. “I told the kids they had to shoot above 3,200, and they shot 3,249.”

Even better, the Owls qualified for the state tournament to keep Seymour’s streak going.

“We were 12th out of 28 teams that qualified out of the entire state of Indiana, so we were mid-pack, which was a strong score,” Purkhiser said. “I didn’t even realize until I ran the scorecards. I purposefully stay out of that so I don’t get it in my head, and I try to encourage them to do their best. By the last flight, I knew where we were. But the last flight, I had some of them that were on Team 1 and I said, ‘OK, come on. I need you. I need one more point.’”

Purkhiser said she put a little more pressure on the archers this year because she wasn’t sure where the team was going to end up.

“I had some questions whether or not we were going to make it to state this year, and I told them, I said, ‘You’ve got to show up. If we don’t shoot that 3,200, there’s a very good possibility we’re not going,’” she said. “Now, everybody else has kind of had a down year, too, so 3,200 was actually a pretty decent score. A little lower would have gotten us into state, too, but I wanted them to exceed, I wanted them to push themselves.”

They did just that.

“With every sport, pressure does different things to different people, and some of them fell apart, didn’t have a good score at all. Others, we had 14 personal bests shot at (the qualifier),” Purkhiser said.

Heading into the state tournament, she would like to see the team beat its 3,249.

“I want to see this team do what I know they can do,” Purkhiser said. “I always keep up with the personal bests throughout the year. I know where we’re at personal best-wise. I know it’s a dream for everybody to shoot their personal bests on the same day, but if they did, we would be shooting over 3,300. For a team that started out in the 3,100s, they’ve got the potential, and I want this team to see their potential. That’s what I want.”

She said several of her four-year archers are clicking, which is great to see at this time of the season.

“That’s what makes me so excited about it is seeing the kids grow and seeing them reach their full potential,” she said. “I don’t want a kid to graduate and not have reached their full potential, and I’m starting to see that, and that’s what I want to see them do at the state level.”

Last year, the upperclassmen saw senior McKenzie Wirtz shoot 299 and win the state title. She was averaging in the 260s, but then it clicked, and she consistently shot in the 290s.

“Hopefully, kids saw that last year, they witnessed that last year and they saw how she had to work to get there and they saw her struggle,” Purkhiser said. “She was a great example because she didn’t give up. I don’t want them to give up on themselves. I’m not going to give up on them.”

Several archers have experienced challenges outside of archery this season, so they have had to battle the mental game as much as the physical game, Purkhiser said.

“When you’ve got stuff going on in your life outside the team, it affects it, and we’ve had some very, very serious things happen this year that have impacted archers big time,” she said. “But they are sticking it out. They are persevering.”

Jones, Hougland and Rocha have been to state the past couple of years, so they know what to expect and look forward to the challenge again.

“It’s really open. There’s a lot of people there, a lot of teams. You just need to get in the right mindset, just focus on you and the target, don’t worry about anybody else,” Rocha said.

“I like the adrenaline of it because it’s such a different experience than anything else that we can experience here,” Hougland said.

“We started out, we were OK, and now, we’ve really got it together, and we’re starting to get better,” Jones said. “I think the upperclassmen help a lot, and then obviously, the coaches play a big part here. They like to focus one-on-one with you. That helps a lot.”

The Owls hope to shoot strong to reach the next step, Eastern Nationals, which runs May 11 to 13 in Louisville, Kentucky.

Then they’d like to reach the ultimate goal of going to the 2023 NASP Open/Championship that’s June 8 to 10 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.