Josh Binger at the 2006 World University Archery Championships

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Gold Medal Compound Men's Team - Stephen Schwade, Josh Binger, and Braden Gellenthien (l-r)

World University Archery Championships – Vinicne, Slovakia

By: Josh Binger

Introduction

The 6th World University Archery Championships were held from June 12th to June 18th. As a member of the Male Compound team, I represented the U.S.A, Texas A&M University, and my hometown of Monroe, Wisconsin. This was my 3rd trip to the World Collegiate Championships, my first being in 2003 in Daegu, Korea, and my 2nd was in 2004 in Madrid Spain. I have always taken great pride in representing my country in these championships.

Qualifying for the 12 person team proved to be more difficult than the actual championships. For those of you unfamiliar with the World Championship events, each team is comprised of 12 members competing in 4 divisions. Archery is a unique sport in that men and women compete on the same field in the same events, so the 4 divisions are divided into male and female, and then divided into compound and recurve bows. To qualify for this team, your placement had to be in the top 3 in your division at the Collegiate Nationals held in May at the campus of UCLA. My qualifying rank was 6th, but there were 3 guys that placed ahead of me that decided not to go to the championships. Right away it was a bittersweet feeling qualifying this way for the team and I felt that I had a lot of work to do in the weeks before the tournament to earn my place on the team. My teammates on the Male Compound Team were Braden Gellenthien and Stephen Schwade both from James Madison University. I was also joined on the team by Amanda Raffaelli and Anna Stratton both of whom are my teammates at Texas A&M and who qualified for the Women’s Compound team. I was really excited to be going to my third World Collegiate Championships.

The Beginning

I left on Saturday, June 10th from Milwaukee to meet up with my 11 teammates and 3 coaches in Washington D.C. More than 16 hours later, we arrived in Munich, Germany which was quite exciting with the World Cup just starting that week all over Germany. During our 4 hour lay over we entertained ourselves playing the free commemorative World Cup foosball tables at the Munich airport where each of the guys took there turns trying to beat the unstoppable foosball god Braden Gellenthein. After about 30 matches, Stephen Schwade and Dakota Sinclair finally beat him! Sitting on the plane awaiting our flight to Bratislava, Slovakia, Amanda and Ann realized that all of our bow cases were not being loaded onto the plane and as we took off, they were still sitting on the runway. Not a great sign. So when we finally got to Slovakia, we were all excited and bowless. I am pretty sure that I slept a good 12 hours to recover.

On Monday, our bows finally came in the morning and we were able to go to the field and have unofficial practice. The field was very nice in a small village called Vinicne. It was good to get some of the muscles loose by shooting that day. The countryside was very beautiful and the people were very friendly. That night we found our place to eat and watch World Cup soccer every night at a place called Massive. There we enjoyed meeting other competitors from other countries outside of the archery field.

The Tournament

On Wednesday, it was the day of Official Practice and the Opening Ceremonies. We practiced the team event that day and got all of our final equipment changes completed and our equipment was inspectioned for the competition that was to begin on Thursday. The Opening Ceremonies were very nice held in the downtown plaza of Vinicne. Amanda and I were the two seniors on the team, so together we were the flag bearers in the ceremony. The competition was officially opened and the archers were welcomed by the country of Slovakia.

Thursday morning was the qualification round for the Female Compound team and the Male Recurve team. In the afternoon it was the qualification for the Male Compound team and the Female Recurve team. The way the qualifying round works is there are 6 ends of 6 arrows to comprise a 36 arrow score, there are 2, 36 arrow scores that make up a 72 arrow round, the best score being a 720 for the total round (10 points for a bulls-eye). During the first round of 36, Braden, Stephen, and I fought the wind and found ourselves around 9th, 10th, and 11th place. We had been shooting very well in the preceding days and all 3 of us were feeling confident that we would be able to figure out the conditions and improve our ranks. And we did just that shooting very strong on the last 6 ends to earn the #1 seed in the team round. Braden earned the number 1 seed by shooting a 692. I earned the 4th seed by shooting a personal best 688, and Stephen earned the 5th seed by shooting a 687. Our total score of 2067 set a new team world record for the Collegiate World Championships. The qualifying round is used for seeding the brackets of the individual elimination round, and the team round.

The elimination round on Friday was looking good for our division because the way that the bracket worked out, we all had a chance to make it to the Semi-Finals before facing each another. The elimination matches consist of 12 arrows for a possible 120 points. On Friday, I begin my elimination matches with a first round bye. My first match of the day was against Josip Maljevac of Slovenia. I opened up with a very strong match winning 118-111 shooting 59 out of 60 on both ends. In the quarterfinals, I came up against the 5th seed, Sebastian, Brasseur of France. This was a very good match up in the quarterfinals being that we tied in the qualification round at 688 (I gained the higher seed by scoring more tens). Sebastian came out with a perfect 60 on his first 6 arrows, and I started out with a 58. Usually a 58 is a good score to start of a match, but Sebastian got an early lead and didn’t let it go.

On the last 6 arrows, we both shot a 57, but unfortunately, I lost the match 117-115. My score was good enough to earn me 5th place for the tournament. Braden had a very good elimination day winning the Gold medal by beating Sergio Pagni of Italy 117-110. Stephen ended up in 6th place after losing to Pagni in the quarterfinals in a 3 arrow shoot-off. We would have liked to have all made it to the semi-finals, but overall the individual competition went very well for us.

On the women’s compound side of things, Anna Stratton and Amanda Raffaelli unfortunately ran up against each other in the 1/8 elimination round. Being teammates at school and for the USA made this a very tough match between the 2. Anna edged Amanda out 114-113 in one of the better matches in the tournament. Anna went on to win the bronze medal by defeating Maja Marcen of Slovenia in a 1 arrow shoot-off. The recurve shooters had a much harder day with no one advancing past the 1/16th elimination round.

On Saturday, the last day of the tournament, the shooting was down to the team round which consists of shooting with your teammates in your division. So this means that Braden, Stephen, and I were competing together in an team elimination round. The 3-person team shoots together against a 3-person team from another country. The match consists of 24 arrows with 8 shot by each archer. The target face is a hit/miss target, which as you can see in the picture below, if you hit the yellow, the arrow is scored as 1 point, if you miss the yellow by 1/16 of an inch, or by 300 ft., it is considered a zero. This round was shot by all 4 divisions that morning and was to be followed by a mixed team competition where the top male and female compound archers from each country shot together in a team round and also the top male and female recurve archers shot together. This competition allowed the teams that did not have teams for the 3 person team round to shoot in a team exhibition event.

Hit-Miss Target ... Yellow = Hit = 1 point ; Anything else = Miss = 0 point

In the first round of the team event since we were the #1 seed, the male compound team received a bye that automatically put us in the semi-finals. In that round we shot against Russia who beat Great Britain in the ¼ finals. The match started out very well for both teams and after 3 ends, we were tied 18-18 and both of the teams had hit a perfect 18 out of 18. On the third end though, we prevailed winning with a perfect score of 24 to Russia’s 22. The 24 hits is a World Record that we share with France who shot a 24 in their semi-final match against Korea. So the Gold Medal match was us vs. France. In that match, France started off rough missing 3 of their first 12 shots giving us an early 12-9 advantage. On the 21st arrow, Braden missed the first arrow for the USA putting France within 2 points at a score of 20-18. On the next shot, I missed my arrow putting the score at 20-21 (France had shot their remaining arrows and we had 2 to shoot) so at this crucial moment, it was up to Stephen and Braden to hit their last shots in order to win the Gold medal. Stephen had a dead center shot and Braden followed with a dramatic hit to win the match 22-21! It felt so good to have finally earned a gold medal after coming up short at the previous 2 World Championships I competed in.

In the female compound division, the USA team struggled a bit in their opening match against Korea losing 19-16, but responded with a resounding 20-18 win over Great Britain to win the Bronze medal. The male and female recurve team did not advance to the medal round but shot very well losing to high seeded teams.

In the mixed team event, Braden Gellenthein and Brittany Lorenti represented the USA in the compound division and Dakota Sinclair and Lindsay Pian were the team members for the recurve team. Braden and Brittany shot incredible to win the World Championship over the surprising Slovenia who upset #1 France in the Semi-Finals. Dakota and Lindsay did not fair as well losing to Chinese Taipei.

The Country

Slovakia was definitely a culture shock upon arrival to Bratislava. Some of the interesting things that we all noted right away was the difference in security in the airports, the difficulties of speaking to people who have no idea what you are saying, and just the people in general. The food was very good with meals usually consisting of beef or chicken with noodles or rice. The water that was served at most places was carbonated water (which is quite disgusting I might add!!) in which we mixed cool aid in to make the water taste better. The hotel was very accommodating with all of the countries staying in the same hotel. This made it a very good atmosphere to meet competitors from around the world.

Soccer was dominating Europe the whole time that we were there. With the World Cup being held not too far away it was a very unique experience seeing how crazy Europeans really are about soccer. It was hard not to become a fan after each night watching various games and going to the local bar to cheer on the United States.

My roommate was Stephen Schwade and we spent a lot of our time in our room watching MTV Europe and listening to all sorts of different music from across the globe. It was interesting gaining a global perspective watching CNN that was from England and seeing how the news was portrayed of the various events around the world. Our room was nice, and it had a very scenic view looking of the city. The shower was quite interesting because it was mounted at waist level and the shower head had to be held in hand. This lead to a lot of water on the floor. It was very fun to be on the same floor with my teammates and getting to know everyone a little bit better.

The End

On Saturday night there was a banquet for the delegations as a final goodbye from the tournament hosts in Slovakia. We had dinner which was followed by a fun evening of dancing to a DJ and mingling with other competitors. A short round of USA vs. France in arm wrestling in the lobby caught the attention of most people at the tournament. It was a lot of fun spending time off the field getting to know people from other countries. It was especially fun to wind the week down with my teammates.

On Sunday, we decided to go into Bratislava and see some of the sights that Slovakia had to offer. After a long day of walking the plaza and seeing the United State Embassy, we went on a trek to see the famous castle that sits atop Bratislava. It was very neat to see the construction of such a large building. The scale of a project like this is huge with all of the steps, walls, and walkways to even get TO the castle itself. There, we toured the castle and the displays of historical paintings.

After the long walk back to the central plaza we hopped on the railcars to go to a shopping mall. The mall was quite an interesting place filled with stores and restaurants that we had never seen before. Just seeing the styles of Europe was fascinating. After eating at the mall and hopping on the railcar back to our hotel, we were all tired and ready to pack up to go home.

Monday morning we left our hotel at 4:00 in the morning. From there we went to the airport in Bratislava where we learned that our flight to Munich was cancelled. This meant that we had to take a bus to Austria where we would get new flights to get us back to the US. So the group split up, some went to Germany, and others went to Switzerland. I was one of the people that had a flight to Zurich, Switzerland where I got a flight from Zurich to Chicago all by myself. And after 12 hours, I was back in the US and ready to be home, although I arrived in Chicago 4 hours early for my flight to Milwaukee. So there I sat in Chicago for 4 hours waiting for my 17 minute flight to Milwaukee, but I didn’t mind because I was able to hear English and eat American food. It was great to be back. In Milwaukee, Mom, Kelly Burns, and my girlfriend Jocelyn Smith were there to greet me and listen to all of my stories about Slovakia.

Conclusion

The 2006 World University Archery Championships ended with the USA bring home 10 medals in 3 different events. The award ceremony to receive our Gold medal is something I will never forget and seeing the United States flag being raised on the center pole is something I have dreamed about. Standing on the podium next to Braden and Stephen was one of the proudest moments I have ever had in archery. I was proud to represent the USA, Texas A&M, my community, but most importantly my family who have supported me since I began shooting 15 years ago. An endless amount of thank you’s deserve to be said for everyone throughout my career that have supported me and all that I have done. Without their help, the experiences that I will cherish forever would not have been possible. I hope that you have enjoyed reading my recap of the 2006 World University Archery Championships and I look forward to many more chances to represent the United States across the globe on the Senior level shooting at the International level.