ASAWMFinal11

This is getting down right common. Common is talking with Levi Morgan of Rossman, NC after a successful 3D shoot.
For the second time in two events for 2011 Levi has won Men's Open Pro at an ASA Pro/Am without having to shoot a sixth arrow in the Pro Pressure Point Shootdown because no other shooter was within 10 points of his score after the first five arrows.
Let's set the stage a little and go back to March 6 in West Monroe, Louisiana. Levi came out of the woods with a two day score of 426 which gave him an eight point lead over Jack Wallace of Ohio a nine point lead over Adam Hayden of Kentucky a ten point lead over Dan McCarthy of Wisconsin and an eleven point lead over Jeff Hopkins of Kentucky.
So of course Levi decides to play it safe and shoot center 10 right, with such a big lead and all.
Not. Levi shot 12, 12, 12, 12 and 14 in his five arrows. So this was an easy shootdown right? Again, NOT! Other than Levi's five shots there were a total of three bonus rings in the entire shootdown. Dan hit a 14 on his third target and Jack shot a 12 and Adam a 14 on their fourth targets. That's it.
How was Levi able to hit every bonus ring when the rest of the best 3D shooters in the world could hit only three among four shooters?
"I judge targets off of detail," Levi said of how he judges yardage to the animals. "All weekend it was dark and rainy. No detail at all in the targets. I guess I was so focused on judging because you had to to be able to get the yardage in those conditions. We went into the shootoff and it was sunny for the first time since I had been there and I could see the targets and all the detail. I just walked up to the targets and for some reason I knew how far every one of them was. I was very confident in my number and I had an eight point lead which made me even more confident. It took me about ten seconds a target and I had them all wrote down and I had all of them right. On the first target once I 12d it I knew the next four numbers were good so I just aimed hard at them and hit behind my pin on all four shots."
Sounds easy right? Maybe Levi is a mechanical robot freak like people are beginning to mumble.
Honestly, what is the mental state of Levi's game right now that allows him to be so dead on?
"Really I just don't have a lot of pressure anymore," Levi says. "I've shot good enough the last few years to get my self to a place where I don't have to win every tournament to pay my bills now and it just took a lot of pressure off me mentally. I think it has helped me a lot to be able to go out and shoot aggressive from the start. It just helps a lot when your house payment isn't riding on you winning."
Now that is beginning to make sense. How many times have archers of all levels come home from a national level shoot saying to themselves, "I shoot better than that on harder courses back home?" The stress level is what seems to get to the shooter.
So other than going robotic on our own what can mere mortals learn from what Levi is doing right now? Let's start with judging targets. How long has Levi been judged off the detail in the animal and how long did it take to master this type of judging?
"I started doing that in 06, my rookie year," Levi said. "I was always a ground judger coming up through youth, that's just the old school way to judge. Find 20 and go five or ten yard increments from there. When your max is 30 yards you can do that. Then I shot Open B and won a tournament there when I was 13 but it still was a lot easier courses than we are looking at now. Whenever I came into the pro class it just wasn't working. The thing is it does work about 85 to 90 percent of the time. It's those four shots a weekend that I would shoot fives on. I started looking at targets because that is the only constant and consistent thing in a shoot that you are going to have is the target. The ground is always different the conditions are always different but the targets never change."
"I started looking at targets and judging that way in 06. Last year it really clicked for me as far as I trusted it a hundred percent. I still don't rely one hundred percent on that. I will check myself with what I call an absolute. That is my 30 yards. I know I can find 30 yards almost to a "T" whenever I need to. So if a target is between 30 and 40 yards and I'm just not a hundred percent by looking at it I will just find my thirty and go from there. I check myself with the ground still. I'm ninety five percent looking at a target."
So there it is a starting point in being more like� well, Levi.
What about practice schedule and amount of time it takes to mentally and physically prepare for a tournament?
"People will probably not believe me if they knew how much I practice because it is not a lot," Levi said. "I do at the beginning of the year. I just want to make sure all my stuff is right and really like for Louisiana, if I am leaving on Thursday I'll probably start the Thursday before. Probably about a week I just start looking at targets."
Just like all top level athletes Levi is whittling down and trying to find the optimum pre-shoot routine that works for him.
"I have tried all different ways," Levi says. "It is different for everybody. For me I have tried every day four hours a day looking at targets and two hours shooting. I shot the worst I have shot. That was before Erie last year. I took the whole month before that and just looked at targets for hours a day, me and Samantha both. And just shot my bow hours a day. Went to Erie and that was the worst score I had shot in four year. So I was like "you know what that does not work for me.""
"What I have found works best for me is I shoot about three times a week for about an hour and a half whenever I go out just shooting and I will take an hour and judge targets on those same days. But I don't judge all twenty targets at a time. I'll judge three or four or five targets a day and really study them. Like for Louisiana, I started the Thursday before. The first thing I do is make sure my equipment is perfect. There is nothing I want to do. If I want to put a half a twist in a cable or string or something I'm going to do that ahead of time. That's the first thing I want to do to preparing for a tournament. Then I want to make sure it is sighted in 100% then I just go look at a target. Then if I am struggling with a target and I am working on that target to try and minimize all the mistakes that I could make at that tournament."
Levi says he does keep a notebook on all his yardages so that he can find trends on certain targets.
It is a good thing that Levi does not have any pressure on himself for shooting archery because the rest of his life seems to be keeping him pretty busy.
"I have shot one local shoot this year since Christmas," Levi said. "I would love to and we will probably shoot more as the year goes on but we are just so busy right now. All of our stuff for the show is in the studio getting cut and we are working with graphics guys and our producer and voice over people and stuff like that. And I'm trying to practice and finish my house so not a lot of time for local shoots."
Speaking of the television show "Life on the Road with Levi and Samantha" what is going on with it?
"People aren't really going to recognize it from the past," Levi brags. "We have really stepped it up. We've got probably the number one producer in the world as far as I am concerned producing the show. He is so talented. He is not cheap but we just decided if we are going to do this we are going to do this right. We've got a graphics guy that is unbelievable. Great footage. We got the best cameras we could get. It's all HD."
The show will air once again on The Pursuit Channel ( http://www.pursuitchannel.com/) which will be airing this year on Dish and Directv. The show has got air times of Tuesday night at 8:30PM, Friday's at 5:00PM and Sunday morning at 9:00AM starting in July.
This weekend Levi will be in Louisville, Kentucky for the NFAA Indoor Nationals and then off to Texas to see if he can three-peat on the ASA Pro/Am Tour.
Levi is still shooting the green Mathews Apex that he got so hot with mid year last year and says he has only made on piece of equipment change prior to the shoot in Louisiana.
"The only thing I did was put an LP light on my sight and a blue fiber," Levi says. "That is probably the biggest improvement to my setup I've done in a long time. All my life I have struggled with fiber and star bursting. I like a little bitty dot. I shot an etch in the lens last year and I liked it a lot if the lighting was good but if it was dark I just struggled to see it. That blue light does not star burst at all. It is just a little blue dot. That helped me tremendously down there this weekend."
We at Archery News Now will keep watching to see if Levi can stay this hot all year.