Tucked into tranquil woods off a dead-end road in Frederick, Sophia Strachan nocked an arrow onto the string. With chirping birds providing the only noise, she drew the bow and took aim.
After a few seconds, she released the string. The arrow sped through the air, piercing the bull's-eye on the target 35 meters away in a clump of trees.
Strachan was alone and at peace, practicing at the Tuscarora Archers range, where she spends much of her time. But she knew this serenity was temporary: Strachan competes at the national level in the Cadet group composed of 15- to 17-year-olds, where she is constantly battling nerves.
And this weekend, the sport she loves took her more than 2,500 miles across the country to Chula Vista, Calif., for the SoCal Showdown, one of five events that determine the five archers who make the United States Cadet archery team.
Strachan entered the tournament ranked third but finished 13th out of 20 in qualifying Friday and was eliminated in the quarterfinals Saturday. Her updated national ranking will be released in a few days.
"I definitely have a competitive streak, and I've definitely gotten used to the [pressure]," Strachan said. "My goal this year is to make the national team."
Strachan, 16, became interested in archery when she was 9. So her mom, Tina Strachan, went to Toys R Us and bought a small target with suction cup arrows and set it up in the front yard. The girl wasn't amused. She wanted the real thing.
So Tina Strachan turned to the phone book, leafing through the pages for a local archery range. She found Tuscarora Archers in the fall of 2008, and that Christmas, when Sophia checked underneath their tree, an envelope sat in the branches, holding a note saying she had four archery lessons.
But she didn't appear to have a promising future for the first couple of years she picked up a real bow.
"I hit everything but the target," Strachan said. "I was kind of the problem child, actually."
Said her mother: "She was terrible at first. She shot the wall, the bucket, the lights."
Part of the problem was her eyesight. She had undergone three eye surgeries as an infant, and her archery instructors weren't sure which of her eyes was dominant.
So they tried putting tape over the left frame on her glasses. Then the right. They tried eye patches. At first, Strachan thought she was left-eye dominant, but eventually, the instructors discovered she needed to use her right eye, and she progressively improved.
Shots that once struck the wall inside the 20-yard range began finding the target. But developing a rhythm was tough. For the first three years, Tuscarora offered only four-week sessions over the winter.
"She couldn't shoot again because she didn't have a bow, and they didn't offer anything else for kids," Tina Strachan said. "So we had to wait a whole ... year. She was like, 'Mom, I want to shoot more. I liked it. I liked it.'"
The girl's persistence paid off when she received her first real bow as a gift from her parents. But it was a generic one that didn't fit her very well. It wasn't until Tuscarora started a Junior Olympic Archery Development team in 2012, when she had a custom-fit bow, that her mom and coach Jerry Shuck saw significant improvement in her ability.
The rising senior at Urbana had not shown interest in team sports and hadn't participated in competitive sports. But she has come to enjoy her archery team.
"It was so exciting when they [started] the team because they got team shirts," Tina Strachan said. "It was the first time we ever saw her name on the back of a shirt. We got such a kick out of that."
Traveling across the country for competitions can make balancing archery and academics difficult at times. While Strachan's teachers have been understanding, she has missed numerous classes. Plus, she said, she shoots about 100 arrows a day, which takes about two hours.
Nonetheless, she hasn't let her dedication to archery hurt her performance in the classroom. Strachan joked that if it were up to her she would drop out, but she understands that school comes first.
"Sophia is great with time management, and she is very motivated," Tina Strachan said. "She gets that she can't let the schoolwork slide or we are going to have a problem."
Now in her fourth year on the team, Strachan has become one of the best archers in the country in her age group with a compound bow, a more mechanized device than a traditional bow. In April, she placed first in the AAE Arizona Cup, blowing away the competition by qualifying with a score of 671 (720 is a perfect score).
Two weeks after taking gold in Arizona, Strachan traveled to Newberry, Fla., to compete in the Gator Cup for a chance to qualify for the world outdoor championships, which are held every two years. (The squad is separate from the U.S. archery team.) Strachan qualified in the top eight, making the head-to-head round to determine the three archers who would represent the country in Yankton, S.D.
For six straight hours, Strachan shot bunches of three arrows. Without a break in the competition, she was able to eat and use the restroom only when there was a one-arrow shoot-off in other matches.
"I've never seen anything so grueling," Shuck said. "It rained. It was windy. It was quite the process. ... It was a great experience for Sophie to go through."
Strachan said that every couple of weeks, she has been dealing with a problem that causes her to miss the target entirely. She hasn't pinpointed the reason yet, but she thinks she might be collapsing her shoulder or letting the bow tilt forward.
She encountered the trouble twice during the shooting marathon, leaving her in fifth place, on the outside looking in.
"If that hadn't happened, I probably would've made the team," Strachan said.
"My fault — but, oh, I would've liked those back. Big-time."