Frederick Douglass High School Archery Team

I just found out that one of our alumni archers was killed in Mt Washington on August 31st. Feven Adugna shot on the Douglass Archery team her junior year 2021-2022. As a coach it is hard to imagine this happening to one of our archers. I remember Feven as a warm and caring person who wanted to be a great archer. Please take time out of your day to remember this young lady who had her life taken away to soon. There is a gofundme page to help with the funeral expenses. https://gofund.me/7ef3fcbd4

The FDHS archery team had 9 archers earn All-City honors. This team never ceases to amaze me. Great job to everyone who earned this honor.

Understanding Burnout in Archery

Burnout isn’t just about feeling tired—it’s a psychological, emotional, and physical response to prolonged stress, and it's increasingly common in athletes, especially those striving for high performance. Archers, who often train in isolation with intense mental focus, are just as susceptible. Recognizing burnout early can prevent a downward spiral in both performance and well-being.

1. What Is Athletic Burnout?

Athletic burnout is a state of chronic physical and emotional exhaustion, often paired with a growing sense of cynicism and diminished accomplishment. It tends to sneak up on athletes and can be mistaken for a simple slump or fatigue.

2. The Three Core Symptoms
a. Exhaustion
This goes beyond physical tiredness. It's a deep, lingering fatigue that doesn’t go away with rest. For archers, this might manifest in lack of focus during training or feeling drained before even picking up a bow.

b. Cynicism
This often starts as detachment or a loss of enjoyment in the sport. Archers may begin questioning the purpose of training or start resenting the routine, feeling emotionally disconnected from what once brought them joy.

c. Inadequacy
Burnout distorts self-perception. An athlete may feel they're not progressing or good enough, even when results suggest otherwise. In archery, this might show up as obsessive self-criticism after each shot or a belief that they’ve “lost their edge.

3.Red Flags to Watch For

Sudden drop in motivation

Persistent muscle tension or injury

Negative self-talk and over-analysis

Withdrawal from teammates or coaches

Trouble sleeping despite feeling exhausted

Understanding the early symptoms of burnout allows archers and coaches to intervene before it becomes severe.

How do you cope when you hit the wall?

Congratulations to all of our scholarship winners! The top 15 male seniors and top 15 female seniors received $1,000 each! Eleven Random Draw Senior Academic Archer Scholarships for $500 each were also awarded!

3D Challenge gave an additional $1000 to the Top Overall archers and $500 to the Runner-up Overall archers.

We need your help! We are missing photos of some of the winners - please post additional photos in the comments.

No matter how good a archer you are and how carefully you prepare for tournaments both mentally and physically, there´s one thing for sure: there will be times when you lose a match.

Sometimes it can be very hard to suffer a failure, to accept it and to live with it. When you lose, you´re normally shattered physically. It´s usual to recover quickly, but the mental side can take hard work. Sometimes you shoot well and lose, other times you shoot badly and lose. Of course, the most difficult situations are those when you feel you couldn´t give your best and you feel frustration, anger and disappointment. As an competive archer you know that losing always includes certain aftermath, but as it´s an unavoidable part of competing the best thing you can do is to learn to handle a defeat, learn from it and move forward wiser and stronger than before.

Right after a defeat you probably feel a need to be alone for a while. Take it. Some of us need hours or even days to understand what happened. How long you need for reflection depends on the expectations you had for the tournament. I think this stage shouldn´t last more than two days.

Avoid talking about your defeat with people who won´t support you. As a archer I know that there´s nothing worse than indifference. My advice is that you don´t try to talk about your feelings to people who don´t care – you´ll only feel worse.

It´s important to let out your frustration. The best thing is to talk to someone who knows you and understands you and your point of view. Once you have eliminated this feeling of frustration and disappointment, you are ready to move on to analyse the match and your game (preferably with your coach) without an emotional roller coaster.

Losing is actually an excellent opportunity to learn!

You can learn much, much more from a defeat than a victory.

Stay on Target and Perfect your Process with the Steps of Shooting 🏹

Christopher Chenault from Fredrick Douglas won an Academic Archer Scholarship!

Come see us March 14-15!!

Kentucky will host the nation’s largest annual school archery tournament March 14-15, as more than 7,000 student archers from nearly 400 schools compete in the Kentucky National Archery in the Schools Program (NASP) State Tournament.

Held at the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville since 2016, the tournament has grown into one of the largest state-level sporting competitions held anywhere.

Learn more: KY NASP (National Archery in the Schools Program)