Archer shoots his way to world junior championship

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/09/2011 (5461 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Keenan Brown first picked up a bow and arrow five years ago, it was to go hunting. Little did he know that he’d one day be a world champion archer.

Wanting to go hunting with his father before gun-hunting season opened, Brown went into a local archery shop and began taking lessons.

“I quickly realized that I would rather shoot at a target,” said the 17-year-old from North Kildonan.

And shooting at targets, rather than animals, is a competitive sport at the national and international level.

“I’m not aware of any hunting competitions,” said the graduate of Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute, who is attending the University of Manitoba this fall.

Brown attended his first national tournament in 2008 and qualified for the Canadian cadet team, earning a trip to the World Championships.

He won every national cadet tournament for two years running, and this year, his first at the junior level, he qualified for the national team, finishing first in the trials.

Heading into the World Archery Youth Championships, held from Aug. 22 to 28 in Legnica, Poland, Brown was confident that the three-man Canadian team would be in the mix for a gold medal.

“It was absolutely my first thought,” he said. “One of my teammates (Christopher Perkins) won the senior world championships during the trials. I knew he was shooting spectacular, I was shooting good, and Michael Kupchanko and I were neck and neck at the trials.”

After posting the second-best qualifying score, the Canadians rolled through matches against Greece, Denmark and the United States to set up a gold-medal match against the Netherlands.

Each match consists of 24 arrows per team, with each archer shooting eight times.

“We kind of had a scare against Greece,” Brown said. “They were beating us by a point after the first six arrows.”

In the match against Denmark, Canada set a new world record with 232 out of a possible 240 points, a total that the Dutch matched in their own quarter-final.

When a Dutch archer was sent to hospital before the final with a major nosebleed, the Canadians could have essentially won by default (as eight Dutch shots would have been scored as misses). But Brown and his teammates told officials that they would allow the match to be delayed until their opponent was ready to compete.

The gold-medal match was close from start to finish, with the Canadians eventually winning by a score of 222-220. For Brown, it was a satisfying experience to have his preparation pay off.

“Since January I’ve been visualizing that moment just before bed and before training,” he said. “I picture myself on that field shooting for a gold medal, being steady, and taking good shots. At the line, I felt like I’d done it 100 times before.”

The gold medal victory might also have been owing to a lucky piece of headwear: a Winnipeg Jets hat that Brown wore throughout the event.

“My dad was going to come to Poland with me,” he said, “but he wasn’t able to because we decided to spend money on Jets tickets in P1 (the most expensive section) instead.

“Because I’m a hockey fan, and I love Winnipeg, and to honour the fact that my dad wasn’t there, I wore the Jets hat every day.”

avi.saper@canstarnews.com