Teenagers Bodie Turner, Liko Arreola win Vegas Shootdowns

Bodie Turner has won the compound open championship at the 2022 Vegas Shoot at the age of just 15, while US compatriot and 14-year-old Liko Arreola successfully defended her compound women’s championship title from 2021.

“It was a really fun shoot. It’s my third year here and my first year shooting pro, it’s just been really fun,” said Turner, whose birthday was just yesterday. (He was 14 when the tournament began.)

Arreola, who won on straight score as the only woman to shoot 900 in 2021, spoke of her excitement to collect the title after a grand finale against two other archers in the arena this time around: “It was a little more shocking and nervous for me because I’ve never done this before, the shoot-off. It’s really fun.”

This year marked a return to the spectator shootdown format after last season’s event was disrupted by the pandemic.

Bodie Turner beat out 22 other men after eight ends of sudden-death shooting for the 50,000 USD top prize in the main event at the Vegas Shoot. He had qualified alongside the rest of the field (except lucky dog Stephan Hansen) as a perfect 900-point shooter after the three days of competition.

In the second end, competition moved from scoring the big four-centimetre 10-ring to the small two-centimetre 10-ring. Soon after, top seed Jase Boils, back-to-back defending champion Kyle Douglas and world number one Mike Schloesser were eliminated.

Others dropped by the wayside and the field was thinned, end by end, as the pressure mounted.

When just seven archers remained, event host and Vegas Shoot president Bruce Cull confirmed that the format would switch to arrow-by-arrow, which was a new twist for this year’s shootdowns. By now, teenager Turner was the highest qualifier remaining. He would shoot last each end – but handled the pressure incredibly well.

In the seventh end, two-time Vegas Champion Sergio Pagni was eliminated in fourth position after missetting his release aid and sending an arrow to the ground, while Dan McCarthy fell out in third place.

Nick Kappers dropped his third shot of the eighth end into the nine, leaving Turner to deliver his 114th perfect-scoring arrow of the weekend and take the title.

“I was shaking like crazy on that,” said Turner. “But I shot a good shot and it made it in there.”

For the first time in Vegas Shoot history, there was a three-way shootdown between archers who had shot perfect 900s for the title in the compound women’s event.

(The previous record was two – in 2019.)

Liko Arreola, Paige Pearce and Tanja Gellenthien, who started the shootdown using the new arrow-by-arrow format, all survived the single pass on the big-10.

But in the second end, with scoring now switched to the World Archery standard two-centimetre 10-ring for compound archers, Gellenthien dropped her second arrow into the nine. Arreola, shooting first in the rotation, delivered a perfect 30 – and Pearce, needing a 10 to match it, sent her third arrow wide.

“I’m feeling really, really good. I was a little nervous in the beginning but it was really fun shooting with Paige and Tanja,” said Liko, who hails from Hawaii.

The championship categories were decided on the third day of competition at the Vegas Shoot, one day after the event played host to the 2022 Indoor Archery World Series Finals on Saturday evening.

Vegas Shoot winners

Categories eligible for the Indoor Archery World Series are listed only. Full results for the championship and amateur categories are available via the Vegas Shoot website.

• Compound open: Bodie Turner, USA
• Compound women: Liko Arreola, USA
• Recurve men: Brady Ellison, USA
• Recurve women: Casey Kaufhold, USA