2025 Lancaster Archery Classic YOUTH RECURVE FINALS

Welcome back everyone to the 2025 Lancaster Archery Classic. There you are looking at the snowy fields of Lancaster County outside the Spooky Nook Sports Complex. And there is a look at our finals stage. Obviously you hear a new voice. I am PJ Reilly sitting alongside Casey Cawfold, U.S. Olympian bronze medal. Casey, it's been a busy weekend. It has and it's just getting better and better as we go. So we have youth recurve coming up here. We have both divisions there, male and female. Give us a rundown of what that's like when you're that age. That's age that's under 17 and under. What's that like to come out into this environment? It's a lot for sure. I mean it's hard. You know some of these kids don't have an experience like this. So for them it's a lot. It's a big learning experience. Super exciting. All right, well we're going to run through our format here. We're going to take our rules. There you go Casey, run through that for us. All right, our shoot-up rules. The top four qualify to shoot on the stage. The ranked ties are broken by 11s and it's a bottom-up format. So four and three will start. The winner advances to face two. The winner advances to face number one. And here we have something special with the 12 ring. It's a one and a half centimeter white dot. So max points you can have is 136. You can shoot it once per end and it must be called for it to count. We certainly love to see those 12s, Casey. That would be quite a stretch to shoot that in youth recurve. But hey, if you never know, you need it. You never know. It happened last year. I remember Joshua Bayek. He was ahead and he was like, you know, we're just going to do it for fun and hit it. So you never know what you're going to get. All right, Casey, well we want to get to the action. So we are going to go out to the floor for our next division. It is youth male recurve. So let's bring in our fourth seed, Keshav Kumar from Franklin, Massachusetts. He won Pan Am team bronze and he comes in as our fourth seed today at the Classic. And let's bring out our third seed, Matthew Tuttle from Arlington, Massachusetts. He started archery during quarantine because he's bored and I guess he's kept with it throughout and he is our third seed today. Welcome to both of you. All right, Casey, I love this. Keshav got into archery because he was watching the Green Arrow. Oh, there you go. Matthew got into it because he was bored during quarantine. I mean, that's what I love about archery is that there's so many different stories and rarely people have two of the same, you know, like if you ask a kid like, oh, how'd you get into basketball? Like it's like, oh, you know, I was on the high school team, but something like this, you know, everybody has a different story of how they got into archery and I find it so fun. That's great. I love it. All right, our Director of Judges, Frank Hevrin is giving them the rundown. We're going to get to the action here. All right, let's see. Looks like Matthew's going to shoot first. He's hitting the 12 button right away. Wow. Okay, this is new. This is new for sure. 12 out of the gate. Nine. I guess maybe the strategy is, you know, you never know if you're just going to have a fluke thing that goes low. So, I mean, no hurt in calling it. Good point. That's right. I know that's a barebow strategy, so interesting to see it here in recurve. Strong start. It's grouping just a little high into the right. Keshav won bronze, team bronze, in the Pan American Championships. That must have been a similar, you know, sort of on the stage, you know, televised experience, you know, coming in here with that. And then I see Matthew Tuttle has listed that he has worked with Coach Kim. Coach Kim is doing a seminar for us at the Academy in February. Coach Kim has worked with a bunch of different Olympians, bunch of different world champions even, and so he's very experienced. So it's awesome that Matthew Tuttle got to work with him. All right. Strong first end there. Let's go after Connor. He's going to meet our archers. No downside to going for it, and if something happens and it ends up down there, you get the benefit. That's exactly why I did it. Great. Run us through your equipment today. What are you shooting? I'm shooting a Hoyt Exceed with Axial Limbs, Ramrods Ultra V3 Stabilizers, Excel Sight, Biter, Plunger, and Flicker. All right. What arrows you got? I'm shooting X-10s. All right. What knocks you got on those? Biter. All right. Awesome. After the first end here, we have official scores. It is 31 for Kashav and 27 for Matthew. All right. So, Casey, I'm watching these guys shoot. What are you seeing? So far, they look very confident. It's good to see. Kashav started off with an 11 right off the bat. We like to see him just go in there and do their thing. I think a lot of kids, they might try a little too hard, but these guys look confident. They're just shooting their shot. They're both really tall archers, which I'm guessing they're probably shooting 66-inch bows. Yeah, maybe even longer. 68, maybe. Yeah. That's good for drawing. Longer drawing, you have more speed to get out of it. Anything in their equipment that's striking you? I'm seeing the stabilizers look shorter than I see, like, you and Brady shoot their side rods. Yeah, maybe a little different. Maybe some, you know, 10 or 12-inch instead of, I know, Brady shoots 14. So, yeah, a little bit of a different setup. Oh, look at that. Arrows whacking together. That's great. But overall, it looks like a very normal, you know, similar setup to what a pro archer would have. Yeah. A little bit of nerves there. Plenty of time. Nice thing about the Classic is we run a 30-second clock. A lot of times in a shoot down like this, it'll be 20 seconds, and that just doesn't give you much room to let down. You know, here, that might give you a little more time to start over if you need. A little bit of shakes here and there, but nothing abnormal for shooting on a stage, I think. If you had to guess, what would you guess their shooting draw weight? I'd say somewhere in the mid to upper 30s. Gotcha. Yeah, I think that's pretty usual for kids around their age. What age are they? 16, 17? Yes, Keshav is 16. Matthew is 17. Gotcha. Yes. Shav, great start to this match. How are you feeling up there? Good. Just a little bit nervous. All right. Run us through your equipment today. What do you got? So, I have a FIVX Argon X, a Galaxy Bronze Star Limbs, WNS SAT Stabilizers, Biter Plunger, and an Axel Sight. All right. And I see Easton X10 Parallel Pros with? Biter Pin 1 Knots. Biter Pin Knots. You're shooting it great. Let's see if we have official scores. Here we do. It is 61 for Keshav and 53 for Matthew. All right, Casey. Galaxy Limbs out there. How about that on the big stage? That's something I didn't notice at first. From all the way back here, I thought they were win-win. And so, it's cool to see somebody shooting, you know, Galaxy on the stage. Good representation there. And he's shooting it well. You know, that's definitely not what you usually see in a pro division. But again, this is the youth division. For folks at home, Galaxy is a brand started by your dad because he saw that there's high end and there's low end and he wanted something in the middle. Yeah. So, that is why we started Galaxy. You know, risers, limbs, give kids who are maybe just, you know, taking a step up a different option for their equipment. It's tournament grade, obviously, because here he is Looks like he's settling in a little bit more. Got a seven point difference at this point. Matthew, both of these kids are from Massachusetts. Yeah, I wonder if they, you know, see each other at local shoots and stuff. That'd be interesting. Oh, first arrow out of the yellow there for Keshav. A little bit of shakes there. So, let down. So, that the reaction from us is like, oh, it's messed up, but not necessarily. Sometimes it might just be something that throws you off a little bit and you're like, you know, this isn't this isn't feeling right and I just need to start over, you know, and sometimes it's better to start over than to second guess it and shoot it anyhow. I was going to say the negative is if you try to force it. Right. Sometimes if you force it and it's still a little bit off, bad things can happen. So, he made a wise choice, had enough time to let down and start over. Good comeback from Keshav after that eight. Matthew, I saw you started archery because you were born during COVID. How's it been going for you? I wasn't born during COVID. It's been pretty good. Good. Good. Where do you shoot back home? I shoot at Woburn Sportsman Association and Ipswich Fishing Game. All right. I see that you and Keshav are both from Massachusetts. Have you guys shot against each other before? Yeah, he actually just moved here and I met him in a competition in Ohio and then we started training together during the summer. Awesome. So, you guys get to shoot matches like this often? We haven't actually done any matches. All right. Well, first of many then. First of many. After three ends here, we have 88 for Keshav and 80 for Matthew. This will be the last end, so keep in mind that. So, Casey, we look at Matthew's coach there. He's a familiar guy to us. Yeah, that's Mr. Brian Brady. He is a coach at the Lancaster Archery Academy, has been with us for, I'd say it's got to be close to 10 years now. I believe it is. Yeah. And so, super experienced. Nice to see him up on the stage there. Now we have an eight point difference. Yeah. What do you think? You might see some 12s? I mean, he was pretty confident hitting that 12 to start. That was a quick shot. Can he hit it when he needs to? Yellow there. Like you said, he's only got one outside the yellow. He's doing great. Looks like Matthew's speeding his timing up a little bit. I think sometimes part of his let downs where, you know, you get a little too shaky, you get a little too slow. It's hard to get through the click, but he's having very nice timing now. That's a good shot. Good end for Keshav. That's going to go to Keshav. Yeah, so Casey, our first match there, 117 to 108 in favor of Keshav. Yeah, Keshav shot great. He had just that one arrow just out of the yellow right off the bat was sighted in. Seems super confident, so we'll see how he does moving forward. That's solid shooting at any level to keep them all in the yellow. Oh, for sure. Yeah. It's, um, recurve is one of those things where anything can happen really, but he really, really was grouping well and shooting some good scores. All right, so Matthew is going to leave us finishing in fourth place. Good for him. Connor's going to bring out our third, second place qualifier. It's time to bring in our second seed. It is Chris Reed from McLean, Virginia. He's won multiple national medals and he's looking to add the classic to his resume. Everybody welcome Chris Reed. So Chris Reed, also 16 from McLean, Virginia. He wrote Lancaster archery classic champ. And I said, oh, what year did you win? And he said, oh, I meant Lancaster archery classic warmup. A little different. Yes. I remember actually qualified on target with them and he did very well. So I'm excited to see how he does today. Yes. So he does archery, he says, for college and slash Olympics. Oh, OK. So wants to go to the Olympics someday. Awesome. That's right. Somewhere down the line, you folks may be teammates. Yeah, we will see in the coming years. You know, 2028 is coming up. So just it's going to come around before you know it. So what's the one that's in L.A. 2028? Yes. So this next one coming up here. Gotcha. Definitely look forward to that. But now I think Chris Reed has chosen to shoot first. So lighting Casey is this is different lighting spotlights and things folks can see it's dark around. Yes. Is that something that like Chris, he's just coming in. Is he trying to figure that out? So I guess the biggest thing with recurve and lighting is string. So depending on how much light you have on you, depending on how you see the string, sometimes it can look wider or it can look skinny and it might be harder to line it up with whatever reference you use on your bow. So that could definitely change things left and right. As far as up and downs, lighting usually doesn't make too big of a difference. But the biggest thing is just making sure you can see that external alignment as best as possible. All right. After this end, I want to get into how they're aiming. We'll talk about that, but let's finish out this end here. Still pretty solid. All three in the gold. Good start for sure. Good job as well. All right. Let's go out to Connor and meet Chris Reed. Chris, welcome to the stage at the Lancaster Archery Classic. Have you been here before? No, this is my first time. First time to the Classic or first time on the stage? First time to the stage. All right. What are you shooting today? Run us through your equipment. I'm shooting a Win&Win ATF DX, Win&Win NSXP foam limbs, an Accel Sight Ramrod Ultra V3 stabilizers, and a Biter plunger. All right. What arrows you got back there? X10 arrows. All right. Perfect. I like the colors on the weights. You do that yourself or have someone do it? I spray painted them. Awesome. They look great. They match well. All right. After the first end here, we have 27 for Chris and 29 for Kashaw. All right. Spray painted his weights. Why not? Yeah. It looks good. I'm big into making sure everything matches, so I appreciate the effort there of him doing it himself. Like we were talking about, Casey, we just watched all compound before this, and they had a peep sight, they had a scope with magnification. Recurve is not that. Right. Recurve, we have no magnification allowed, so we are seeing the target through our sight exactly how ours see it. Here, they're most likely shooting an aperture that is just an open circle or has some sort of pin, dot, or fiber in it to assist them in aiming, but there's no magnification in that lens. You were talking about the string. What are you doing with the string in your sight picture? Depending on how you anchor, how your head position is, all those things, it can look different. For me, I line the string up with the riser, like with the window of the riser, whereas some people might line it up with the inside of their sight, depending on how they see it. The main thing is just to pick a reference that you can line it up with every time, so you're exactly the same. That leaves the door open for inconsistency. Because if your string's off to the left, you're going to hit right. If your string's off to the right, you're going to hit left. That's where the lighting plays in, where it might look slightly different. It can kick you either left or right. That's a good shot there. Again, still, he's just keeping them in the goal. These guys are talented. They're young now, but I'm just excited to see how they're looking in the next few years. This is the future of archery for us. Yeah. Yeah, great in there. Unofficially, we've had 27 for Chris and 29 for Keisha. All right. Awesome. Awesome. Do you do robotics and stuff for school or on your own? For school, yeah. All right. Awesome. That's very cool. What about you, Chris? What do you like to do with your free time? Probably just hanging out with my friends and family. All right. Awesome. See, we got scores confirmed now. We got 54 for Chris and 58 for Keisha. Four-point match with two ends left. All right. I was not expecting robotics as an answer. I don't believe I've ever had that one before. Yeah, that was different. It's good to know, you know, what they get into other than archery. Exactly. Yeah. I wouldn't have answered that at 16, but he's probably going to be much more successful than I am. So, smart kid. Oh, yeah. Looks like we got a four-point difference here. Let's see how Chris can respond. He's a little bit down right now. Might need to make up some ground. So, Casey, aiming at that 12 is difficult with any bow and recurve, but are you going? Yeah. What can you do if you're Chris? Are you just shoot and hope something happens to Keisha? He's not showing any signs of letting up. I'm trying to think, what can Chris do to help himself? Right. When you're that far down, I feel like the 12 is really all you can do, you know. I think that is a great shot there. That'll make him up some ground, but I think the biggest thing is you can't just hope that your opponent's going to mess up. You have to be aggressive and you got to go for it. So, if I were him, I'd, at this point, be going for the 12. So, we'll see. Looks like not this end, but for sure it's hard to see the 12 on that recurve bow without the magnification. You can only shoot it once per end, so if you wait until the last one, you're four behind. Not much you can do, but there that end, made up two points there. Yeah, unofficially, we have a two-point match. 87-85. Close the gap a little bit. One end left. I believe that one got it. That looks good there. Yeah, broke the line. So, different than what we've been seeing with the compound folks as we're shooting very skinny arrows here. Yes, so a lot of times recurve archers like to shoot the skinny arrows. One, because it's easy to move from indoor to outdoor. Just have a very similar setup, but also, depending on your draw length and your draw weight, something like a 23 can be hard to tune. So, you kind of want to have your options open with the skinny arrows. There might be more forgiving for setups like this. Yeah, it's, you know, Brady Ellison obviously is world number one currently now, so he's pretty good, but I've seen him shoot 23s where his arrow fling is horrible. Right. But he says that he can get where I want him to go. So, there's a give and take there for sure. Yeah, and he catches those lines. Yep, lots of 11s. Keisha up first. Three arrows to go. I'm here. I'm excited for everybody, but I want to see a close match, and that might have just opened the door there. Yep. Great response. The lead may have changed. At least a one point, maybe two. Nine. Oh, just out. Definitely leaving a little bit of room for Chris to make up some points here. One of those 11s he was shooting would help out right now. Ten. Great group there. Wow. Those are side by side. There we go. Unofficially tie match. Last arrow. Let's see how he can handle the pressure. Ten. That's a good shot. Okay. That's going to be close. There's going to be some line calls here. Unofficially looks like an 11 would take it. Oh, we got it. Wow. What a comeback. We'll have to see officially from the judges where those arrows lie, but it's looking good. Might have a shoot off or even a lead change and a win. We've got a few line calls to figure out, but what a finish to this match. Great shooting here on this last end and through this whole thing. Pressure shooting there, Casey. Oh my goodness. Wow. That was an amazing response. Knowing he needed most likely an 11 to either tie or win on that last end and getting up there and nailing it. I mean, that's awesome. He stuck to his game plan, I'm sure, and executed some good shots. What's your heart rate doing? Last arrow. You need 11. Yeah, definitely a lot of nerves going through. Heart rates probably spike in a little bit and he's looking cool and calm though. I mean, look at him go. That's official, Casey. All right. He got that 11, so it is 115 to 114. Yeah, look at him. He did the opposite of my strategy. Apparently, I don't know much because he just stuck to his game. No 12s. He just did his own thing and unfortunately the other archer had some slip-ups. Takes it on the last arrow. All right, Connor's going to bring out our top seed. Now it's time to bring in our first seed, Jackson Miller from Phoenix, Arizona. He took second last year at the Classic and he's back again this year to go for first. Everybody, welcome Jackson Miller. All right, Casey. Jackson Miller, also 16. Yes. From Phoenix, Arizona. I recognize him from last year. Yes, second place finisher last year. So let's see if he can one-up it and finish first here. Comes in as the number one seed, so obviously he's been working on his game. Must have had a strong qualification round and got through the matches pretty easy. Yeah, we should mention, Casey, that to get to this point, these archers, as every other archer did, they shot 60 arrows for score. Yes. 660 is a perfect round and then we ranked them based on that and then this morning everybody shot elimination matches head-to-head to get to, for this class, the final four. Right, so there's a lot of steps to get here, which is what makes this such a high-pressure situation. It's a great start there from Jackson. He's shooting. Yes, he is, but yeah, it takes a long process to get to this stage, so these two have worked hard for it. Yeah, good response from Chris. A little bit of a wide arrow there, high. Great left and right. Man, that just looks like one arrow on the TV there. Yeah, the shadows are deceiving. Yes, with the lighting setup, it's sometimes a little hard to see exactly what's going on. Connor's on the scope out there, so he has a better view of it than we do. Yeah. Wow, look at that group. That's amazing. Kids should be shooting a three spot. Gonna have to be behind some new knocks. All right. How are you feeling? I'm feeling good. I feel good back to be up here. Yeah, run us through what you're shooting this afternoon. I'm shooting the XD with Axia Woodlands with Ramrods Vectors, Axia, I mean, sorry, Excel XP Sight. All right. Yep, Biter Plunger. What tab you got? I have Easton Eclipse 2014. All right, what tab you got there? Brady tab. Awesome. Shooting it well, Jackson. We got, after one end, we got Jackson Miller, 27, and Chris Rhee, 32. All right, 32-27 there, Casey. Yeah, that was a strong start from Chris. The nice thing about not coming in as first seed, right, most people always think you'd probably want to come in as first seed, but I think Chris here has already shot a match, whereas Jackson is coming in cold. Now, I feel that's been a debate, you know, like, okay, what's better? Do you want to come in as first, or do you want to come in maybe second or third and have a few more warm-up ends and a whole match there? What do you prefer, considering that you're the number one seed tomorrow? Right, I've won doing either. I mean, to me, I guess more so it's like what you do when it matters, not so much how you come into it, but I'd say I definitely prefer coming in. If I had to choose, I would prefer second seed. Second seed, okay, yeah. Paige Pearce said the same thing, that she doesn't like being number one. Because it's definitely a challenge coming in cold. Not impossible by any means, but just different. Figuring out that lighting, especially for you Yeah, compound more so. There's not usually much a gap in score, at least recurve. It's not all the time that somebody's perfect might have a little more leeway. A little bit of wiggle room there. Oh, you might see a lead change here. Jackson. Jackson's figuring it out. Good response there from him, going to the second and unofficially 58-56. Okay, so Chris still hit, but definitely made up some ground for Jackson. So that's the arrow we're looking at. That's a nine. That did make it. Does that bump him up to nine? This is Chris that they're looking at now. Yeah, that's a nine. Yeah, so the rule is that it just has to break the line, or if the line is punched out from a previous arrow, the recreation of the line, like the arrow has to cut through what would be the recreation of the line. So there, that would score higher as a nine. And so one of the things about the Classic, Casey, that's unique in that ranking is that every arrow counts towards the ranking. So everything they did today, you know, obviously they had to win their matches, but even still, it adds to the qualification. Yeah, so say if, you know, somebody might not have qualified super well, but made it through the matches, shot really well in those matches, you get those scores added to your qualification score. So somebody can bump up instead of being fourth seed, they might be third or second, which is, you know, a nice perk. That's a good shot there. So in Jackson's shot there, we're looking at him right there. What do you see? Looks pretty strong. He looks strong for sure. I, just there, I noticed his eyes are darting a little bit left and right. I like to stay fully focused on the target. My eyes never leave the target. Let's see if we can see it again on this next shot. I find that you see his eyes come slightly off the middle. Yeah. I find that super interesting. Might be looking at his clicker or time or I'm not sure, but it's just interesting. His eyes aren't always staying in the middle. That's interesting. You noticed that. I didn't see that. Oh, that's something I always focus on, where people's eyes are, how much they blink. I find that super fascinating. I'm one, I'm at full draw. Eyes stay on the target and I don't blink. If I blink, something's going wrong. And so, I just find it super interesting to see what other people do. Look at that group. It's nice. Number one seed there. He's proven why he got that position. So whatever he figured out. Let's go to Connor. Other than archery, it's mostly archery. So I play a few games here and there, but. All right. He's dedicated. Shooting great, Jackson. Who do you got behind you coaching today? Judy Adams. She's my coach. Judy, good to see you. How are you feeling about your archer here? He's pretty amazing. He works really, really hard and it's kind of fun to see him up here. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome to have him back and shooting again up here this year. Waiting on scores to be confirmed, but we have what looks like to be a five point game. Eighty four. Eighty nine in Chris's favor. And that is confirmed. Yes. Five points difference. Eighty four to eighty nine. Remember that twelve buttons up there, guys. So Casey, two years in a row, second place. That's you and that's happening. Is that just like more fire? Yeah, for sure. Second's always hard. You know, you're on the podium. You're doing well, obviously, but just the difference between second and first feels like a lot. It feels more than just one placement, you know. So I know that both of these guys are up there super hungry to get that win. And I was talking about second place already, but that first arrow from Chris opened the door a little bit. Yeah. Every point matters here. You never know what can happen. Went from five points down to four point lead. Still got two arrows to go. Longer hold there. Kept it in there. Oh, wow. Look at that group. Yeah. Last arrow for Chris. First time at the Classic. We have Jackson calling the twelve. Yeah, Jackson hit that twelve button there. And that's, you know, you got to do what you got to do. And sometimes even if you know you're not going to get it, might as well go out with the bang. Still a good shot. Good shooting from both of them. So, Chris Reed is going to take this. Yeah, he had an awesome comeback that first match he was out here and stayed strong the whole way through to that last arrow. All right, let's go out the car. Yeah, it was tough, so. But you had a great match. And you as well, Chris. You had a great match. How does it feel up there? It feels great. Yeah. Yeah, you've been shooting great. All right. We're waiting for scores to get confirmed. So we're waiting for scores here, Casey, but I think we know what the result is going to be. Chris Reed is going to be our youth recurve champion. Yep. Jackson Miller is going to finish in second place. Both of them shot great. Good showing up on that stage for the youth recurve division. It feels great. I was excited to be here and I'm glad I finished out strong. You did awesome. Congratulations. Everybody, let's give him a hand. Chris Reed and Jackson Miller. Great shooting, both of you. All right, Casey. Great match there in youth recurve. Here we got a little bit of a recap. Great match. Love to see those. I'm just amazed every one of those kids was like six feet tall. Maybe it's just because of the stage. I don't know. Good shooting from our archers here in youth recurve. We're going to be back in a couple minutes and we're going to have youth female recurve here at the 2025 Lancaster Archery Classic. Folks, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.