Why three-time World Field Champion Pearce doesn’t need 50-metre season

For all recurve archers, the Olympic Games is the be all and end all of their careers.

Qualify for that and you have already ticked off something on your bucket list that hundreds of athletes will never be able to experience.

However, as compound is not yet an Olympic sport, archers from the discipline need other competitions to not just make a career out of but also to motivate themselves.

Many would say the next biggest thing after the Olympics, the biennial World Archery Championships is the tournament all compounders aim to get to, which next year takes place in Gwangju, Korea.

Others would perhaps say the annual Hyundai Archery World Cup which includes four stages (three in an Olympic year) and a final every year – 2024’s being in Tlaxcala – in locations scattered across the globe.

Compound woman Paige Pearce though is one of the few world level athletes that is fuelled by field archery.

“If you ask me what I’m strongest at, that’s what it is,” said Pearce, who won her third consecutive World Field Championships in Lac La Biche in September, the first woman to achieve the feat. “I shoot a lot of that in the US on the other circuits.”

“The thing that I enjoy the least is probably outdoor target and indoor. This, to me, can get a little repetitive. I just don’t find it as much... I don’t find it as exciting, I guess,” she explained as she was competing in the Swiss Open in Lausanne, the first stage of the indoor circuit.

What Paige loves about field is the differences of being able to walk around, shoot all different targets, at different angles, and the constant changes from one target to the other.

The repetitiveness the American speaks of has sparked a three-year absence from the Hyundai Archery World Cup with her last appearance in archery’s premier international circuit being the 2021 Final in Yankton where she came seventh.

Instead, Pearce has been prioritising competitions on her home US circuit, shooting in tournaments held by the National Field Archery Association, Archery Shooter’s Association (which has recently added a further six competitions to her calendar) and USA Archery.

Next year however, the World Cup returns to the States in Haines City, Florida, for the first stage of the 2025 season, but when asked whether she will be attending, Pearce remained uncertain.

“If there’s no conflicts, I would like to do Florida, and I would actually like to do the one in Spain (Madrid) as well.”

“I just need to look at the schedule and see what fits in. Unfortunately, some of the other events have like ‘shooter of the year’ [status], and so if I miss one of their tournaments, it takes me out of [the race for] ‘shooter of the year’.”

“So certain circuits I can’t afford to miss any of their events but I’m hoping that I get to be there.”

The 29-year-old from Red Bluff, California. has already ruled out going to Gwangju next year due to scheduling conflicts, but should she enter Haines City or any other 50-metre competition in the outdoor season, the preparation will be no different. 

In other words there will be no preparation.

As most of her focus is on the field, Pearce’s time to practise on a usual outdoor compound range is limited, and she claims she shoots “zero” scoring rounds on 50-metre targets throughout the whole season.

Winging the outdoor season though hasn’t totally hindered her career as she currently sits in the world rankings at number 23, but this is largely due to the Santiago 2022 Pan American Champion’s record in the indoor season, nearly as equally impressive as her field endeavours. 

Pearce currently has 10 international indoor medals to her name and nearly added an eleventh recently in the Swiss Open Lausanne, the opening stage of the 2025 Indoor World Series, but narrowly lost to Dane Tanja Gellenthien in the compound women’s bronze final.

“I pulled back from the World Cups, but at indoor, I really never slowed down. If anything, I kind of picked up on that,” last year’s GT Open gold medallist responded when asked about her indoor career. “It is nice to be able to jump back in and show that on the World Archery side of things, that’s what I’m looking to do.”

“I put more focus on these individual events because it has all of my attention instead of being at Vegas and then just one evening getting thrown into a different type of event with a different sight, different arrows. That’s challenging,” she added.

So far, the challenge of Vegas, which happens on 8 March next year, hasn’t bothered Pearce’s career having podiumed in the 2020 (gold), 2021 (silver) and 2024 (bronze) Indoor Series Finals and a respectable start in Lausanne bodes well for the rest of her indoor season.

It may not be in the glamour divisions of outdoor World Cups or World Championships, but Pearce has dedicated her time to an area of archery lesser known on the global scale, creating a niche for herself that has propelled to having over 30,000 followers on Instagram and over 15,000 subscribers on YouTube, where she creates short videos, offering advice on bow set ups and other tips much like her compatriot Jake Kaminski. 

Making the USA compound team has never been an issue for Pearce having won numerous national titles, but she chooses to use her position on it sparingly at least on the world outdoor stage to fulfil her potential in field.

She is a living vindication that highly successful careers can be made in compound archery without the lights, camera and action that the outdoor season is often perceived to bringing.