{"id":33905,"date":"2023-05-21T20:31:47","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T02:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-eighth-grader-peyton-perry-wins-archery-nationals\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:14:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:14:44","slug":"cortez-eighth-grader-peyton-perry-wins-archery-nationals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-eighth-grader-peyton-perry-wins-archery-nationals\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez eighth-grader Peyton Perry wins archery nationals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Peyton
Peyton Perry won S3DA Western Nationals for archery in April. She shot in the barebow recurve discipline. (Whitney Perry\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Cortez eighth-grader Peyton Perry won S3DA Western Nationals for archery in April, making it her first national title after shooting archery for four years.<\/p>\n

Perry began competing in archery when she was a fifth grader in Ohio and fell in love with the sport. When her family moved to Cortez, she joined the local 4-H archery program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the spontaneousness and the challenge of it,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it\u2019s really fun to just go out and shoot.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Western Nationals, Perry shot in the barebow discipline. Perry explained that when you shoot barebow, the bow doesn\u2019t have any sights. It is just her and the bow.<\/p>\n

At the county level, Perry has won grand champion twice, and state reserve grand champion in 2021. She ended up winning 4-H state in 2022 and was S3DA state reserve champion in 2023, qualifying her for nationals in Vernal, Utah.<\/p>\n

\"Peyton
Peyton Perry shooting at nationals in Vernal, Utah. (Whitney Perry\/Courtesy Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Because she knew she was in the running for national champion, Perry said she felt nervous but was able to shoot the way she needed to in order to clinch the national title.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything went according to plan,\u201d she said. \u201cI was pretty nervous, and we shot over the course of two days. I shot worse on the first day because I didn\u2019t really know what I was doing and was pretty anxious about it, but on the second day I did a lot better and shot very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

After being named national champion, Perry said she was excited to see her hard work pay off.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was pretty excited,\u201d Perry said. \u201cI\u2019d worked for several weeks honing my skills and it all paid off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry said she will continue shooting throughout high school and is planning to compete in archery at the collegiate level someday. She also said she is aiming for the biggest competition of all \u2013 the Olympics.<\/p>\n

Perry\u2019s mother, Whitney Perry, spoke of Peyton\u2019s goals, saying she has spoken often about working toward collegiate archery and the Olympics.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeyton said this morning that her goal is to get a college scholarship eventually. She\u2019s going to keep doing archery throughout high school and she wants to hopefully make it to the Olympics,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

To accomplish this goal, Perry said she plans on going to more competitions and bigger competitions to become more familiar with how elite level archery works. She also hopes this will put her on the radar of college teams and recruiters.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeyton wouldn\u2019t be able to do this without the help of Stacey and Kelly Weyand and John Butler. They\u2019ve really helped her to get to where she is today,\u201d her mom said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

been shooting since she was in fifth grade and won her first national title in April <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[947,2299,21,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-33905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-4-h","tag-archery","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82401,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33905\/revisions\/82401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33905"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=33905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}