Compound preview: 2021 Indoor Archery World Series Finals

Read the recurve preview.

Tasked with adhering to pandemic-friendly restrictions over the past year, World Archery has taken the opportunity to implement new wrinkles to its tournaments. That includes virtual styles of competition and new formats like this weekend’s inaugural team-only Indoor Archery World Series Finals.

The team event itself isn’t new. It was introduced a few years back, when the indoor circuit got its rebrand; however, the titles are normally awarded solely on the results of the stages and without any head-to-head aspect.

For the 2021 season, that situation was inverted, with the individual champions crowed on the open ranking and the team titles in the competition arena, albeit a multilocation one.

This weekend’s compound competition will see four teams representing companies Easton and Arc Système, the national squad of Estonia and a scratch group of juniors from the USA, the Hotshots. They will shoot for a share of a guaranteed prize fund of 10,000 CHF from four entirely separate locations. The competition rules are also different, introducing the concept of ‘games’, and are explained in full in the linked article.

Scroll down for a closer look at the teams we’ll be watching this weekend.

Schedule: Compound – Saturday 27 February

16h00 CET (07h00 PT/10h00 ET): Semifinals

• Arc Système (2) v Estonia (3)
• Team Easton (1) v Hotshots (4)

19h00 CET (10h00 PT/13h00 ET): Final

Team Easton

• Kris Schaff (team captain)
• Linda Ochoa-Anderson
• Reo Wilde

Team Easton qualified for this event as the first seed by a margin of 11 points, shooting a combined total of 1777 – or 23 off perfect – during the second remote stage of the Indoor Archery World Series in December.

It’s not surprising that they enter this tournament as the favourites. Kris Schaff is a former Indoor Archery World Series and Hyundai Archery World Cup Champion, currently ranked third in the world, while Reo Wilde is a three-time World Archery Indoor Champion (2003, 2005 and 2012) who also won the outdoor World Archery Championships in 2009. Linda Ochoa-Anderson, of Mexican fame, relocated to the US and is getting a first taste of success with new Stateside teammates.

Team Easton is competing this weekend from Reo’s home range and will face the Hotshots in their semifinal.

Arc Système

• Adrien Gontier (team captain)
• Lola Grandjean
• Nicolas Girard

Nicolas Girard had his breakout performance at the Nimes Archery Tournament in 2020, his local major event, with a silver medal in the compound men’s event. He’s in this second-seeded group with the up-and-coming Adrien Gontier, the captain, and student archer Lola Grandjean, who is making the transition to the senior ranks at the age of 20, having competed internationally in the under-21 and under-18 ranks.

Gontier shot the team’s best score of the season, a 596, during this year’s tournament in Nimes.

Arc Système is competing this weekend from a national training facility in Dijon and will face Estonia in their semifinal.

Estonia

• Lisell Jaatma (team captain)
• Meeri-Marita Paas
• Robin Jaatma

Sibling duo Lisell and Robin Jaatma team up with 18-year-old Meeri-Marita Paas in this top Estonian squad. Despite shooting most of the remote stages from the comfort of their home ranges, the trio put in their best performance – as a group – at the Sud de France – Nimes Archery Tournament, averaging more than 586 points for a 1759 total. Lisell is now the two-time defending compound women’s champion in Nimes. She and her brother have also had success as student-athletes.

Estonia is competing this weekend from a sports facility near Tallinn and will face Arc Système in their semifinal.

Hotshots

• Cole Zeug (team captain)
• Brielle Ochnich
• Sawyer Sullivan

Somewhat surprise finalists, the Hotshots are a junior group from the USA, two of whom were members of the gold-medal-winning compound cadet men’s team at the 2019 World Archery Youth Championships in Madrid. It’s Ochnich, just 14 years of age, who makes her main stage debut in front of the cameras this weekend, even if that stage is a remote one and the cameras are their own mobile phones. Brielle twice shot respectable rounds of 582 points during the season.

How this team, the least experienced, matches up with the top seed in their first match will be something to watch.

Hotshots is competing this weekend from Archery Country in Minnesota and will face Team Easton in their semifinal.

Predictions

The Hotshots have nothing to lose against three experienced archers in Reo Wilde, Kris Schaff and Linda Ochoa-Anderson. They should go for the 12-ring early and often, trying to build an early advantage either before or during the first half of the team match. If they can pile on enough pressure, they can go against the bracket.

Estonia versus Arc Système figures to be a close one, given the archers’ comparable international experience.

If the youngest team on the shooting line can pull off the upset, they’ll be unbeatable in the final. If not, it’ll be the quality of a Team Easton line-up that’s collected more international honours than the other nine archers combined that takes this one home.

The compound competition at the 2021 Indoor Archery World Series takes place remotely on Saturday 27 February.