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 Archery: Practice pays off Overtime drills work as U.S. men take bronze in tiebreaker Saturday, September 23, 2000 By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
SYDNEY, Australia -- Too many times to count, they had practiced the drill. Reluctantly. Because it bugged them.
The members of the U.S. men's archery team just couldn't figure out why they bothered to practice the format for "overtime" -- three arrows, 60 seconds, one shot for each of the three archers. Rod White, for one, had not only never been involved in such a match, but he also had never even heard of anything being decided that way. But none of the archers could make U.S. Coach Lloyd Brown change his mind.
White and his teammates are done complaining now.
They won a bronze medal in team archery yesterday because they did exactly what they needed to do in overtime.
In a dramatic finish that brought most of the fans in Sydney International Archery Park to their feet, Butch Johnson and Vic Wunderle shot 10s and White closed out with a 9 to defeat Russia in the first Olympic match to need a tiebreaker.
White, a Hermitage native, and Johnson also were part of the U.S. team that won a gold medal in 1996.
"Winning the bronze medal is one of the greatest feelings in the world, but it compares nothing to winning the gold medal like we did last time," said White, who lives in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
As recently as six months ago, White never even dreamed that he would win two Olympic medals before his 24th birthday.
He finished fifth last fall at the Olympic trials, two spots short of making the team, and didn't mind much because he had plenty going on in his life: a new wife, Maria; a baby on the way; a start-up construction and roofing business; and elk hunting in Idaho.
Then the team fell apart. Shane Parker was kicked off for cheating, and Justin Huish, who won individual and team golds in Atlanta, was arrested on drug charges and resigned. So Johnson and White were added to the team.
White got the news a few weeks after his son, Cole, was born on Leap Day. White was lining up jobs for Mount Pleasant Roofing and Construction. He hadn't used a recurve bow since the trials, using his more forgiving compound bow for hunting and 3-D tournaments.
"The way I made the team, it wasn't like 'Ya-hoo, I made the team,' " White said. "It was 'Ooooh -- I've got to work.' I wanted to win a medal for my country. I felt obligated to do the job. I had to get out there and work for my country."
He also had to work so his family could go to Australia with him.
He and Maria had 500 T-shirts printed with a kangaroo and the words "Shooting for the Outback." They sold almost all of them, enough to pay for airplane tickets for Maria, Cole (who only had to pay a "baby tax" on Maria's ticket) and Maria's mom.
White's sponsor, Mathews, developed a recurve bow for him and even threw in a baby-sized white hat with the company logo to shield Cole from the sun. Then, parents of an old high school classmate of Maria's mentioned that a relative lived in suburban Sydney, and not long after, Maria, her mom and her son had a place to stay for free.
"They even packed us lunch," Maria said, laughing.
White's parents, Richard and Ella, who still live in Hermitage, scrambled to find a $99 flight from Cleveland to Los Angeles and another relatively inexpensive flight to Sydney. The closest affordable lodging they could find was a two-hour train ride away, and they left for the archery range at 4 each morning.
White sacrificed, too. He practiced before daybreak and at night, the only times he could spare between supporting his family. He got a part-time job selling nutritional supplements for Advocare (which happened to make a product that kept his ailing shoulder healthy). He took fewer construction jobs, even though he wanted his company to get off to a good start and it was the busy season.
So imagine how horrible White felt after the U.S. team's semifinal match against Italy, which was neck and neck most of the way. He was the last U.S. archer, shooting a 7 with his final arrow, which didn't exactly put the pressure on the Italians' final shot. Ilario di Buo would have needed to shoot a 6 for the Americans to advance to the gold-medal match, and he came through with a 10.
Then the Americans had 30 minutes to regroup before their bronze-medal match against Russia, which lost to eventual champion Korea in the other semifinal.
"I was pretty tough on myself," White said. "Even though we wouldn't have won if I'd shot a 10, I did something that screwed the team. But the truth is, all of us shot bad heading into that. Me and Vic, we gave up the same number of points. We all shot blah."
Johnson and Wunderle spent the 30 minutes between the semifinal and the final reminding White that the loss wasn't solely his fault. Then the Americans came out strong, building an eight-point lead in the first end of nine arrows.
But that was due as much to the Russians' mistakes -- two 7s and an 8 -- as their own four 10s. And when the Russians started shooting well, the Americans were in trouble.
"I think we let up too much," White said. "We were joking around down there, but it's hard to say that to your teammates. You want to, but you don't want to damage their confidence."
In the final end, the Russians scored five 10s on their first six shots. In the same span, the Americans managed only two 10s, and Wunderle shot two 7s. By the time the final archer for each team came up, the Americans were clinging to a one-point lead.
Baljinima Tsyrempilov shot three 9s, and White stepped forward. He shot 9, 9 ... and 8. That tied the score at 239 and sent the match into overtime.
"It was a great shot," White said. "When I saw it was an 8, I was really bummed out, but the wind let up just as I shot, and the arrow went exactly where I was aiming."
For the overtime, White put his previous mistakes out of his mind. His shot clinched the bronze medal.
"He came through," Johnson said. "We really needed it, and he shot it great."
White will celebrate his bronze medal much the same way he did his goal -- by going home and resuming his normal life. This time, he will get the construction business started up again, spend a little more time with Maria and Cole and concentrate on 3-D tournaments, another aspect of archery.
And he expects that demand for his services as a hunting guide will improve. After all, he has shown again that when it really counts, he can find the target.
"This way, they know I'm not just some punk kid taking them out," White said.
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