Bullseye For The 24th Time

Wind whipped across Michigan’s green fields as rain drenched archers prepared to take aim at the 2026 USA Archery Collegiate Target Nationals. Having travelled over a thousand miles, the Texas A&M archery club brought home their 24th nationals championshipship. Since 2010, the team has maintained a consistent winning streak while continuing to grow through each cycle of graduating students and new members.

“I really think that team dynamic is what separates who’s winning and who’s not,” Head Coach Lorinda Gomez said. “You can have all the talent in the world, but I really think them meshing and working together, pushing each other, motivating each other is what separates them from that next level.”

This year team turnover for nationals pushed the coaches to hold tryouts for the first time in the club’s history. Of the 80 archers who competed for a spot, 53 earned places on the national team roster. The season ended with a double victory as the team brought home medals and trophies from both the USA Archery Collegiate Indoor Nationals and the USA Archery Collegiate Target Nationals.

“We led the points standings with what we believe to be the largest point deficit that has ever happened in collegiate nationals history,” Rendyn Brooks ’29 said. “There were nine more medal matches happening on the third day of competition … and without those medal matches, it was impossible for anybody to catch up to us.”

Gomez makes sure archers practice shooting four times a week, alongside mandatory team practices on Thursdays. Her coaching style revolves around planning, identifying focus areas and encouraging self-reflection, emphasizing intentional practice. Yet despite the preparation, nature became another opponent at nationals, with wind and rain working against every arrow.

“I think the biggest challenge for nationals was the weather,” Catalina GNoriega ’27. “Michigan was cold, it rained a little bit and the biggest challenge was how windy it was. The wind was very strong and it was very hard to shoot in. It’s just inevitable that one arrow or another is going to end up getting caught by the wind or your body’s going to get caught by the find.”

For GNoriega who is an Olympian, competing with the archery club was both a welcome challenge and a quiet respite.

“I found a family with the team and [have] been able to up my game in archery,” GNoriega said. “There’s this sense of more to life than just your sport and I think a lot of athletes can relate to that. I’m still very competitive and I still want to do really well in archery, so being with a team that has similar goals [because] we all want to win regardless of the levels.”

Unlike many other collegiate sports, archery is both a team and an individual sport, allowing athletes to compete for team titles while also earning individual medals. The team finished the season with 17 All-Americans, two Archers of the Year, 13 mixed-team medals and six individual medals.

“Our plan is to use this 24th win as momentum,” Brooks said. “We’re going to try and do everything we can to harness this momentum, harness this motivation, and bring that back with us this fall whenever we get back into our team practices. We’re going to do a lot of work to keep those team practices high energy, keep them focused, and keep them focused and do what we’re doing.”

As one season ends and another begins, the standard the club has set for itself remains unchanged.

“We always tell the archers, ‘If you’re able to win our Thursday night practices you’re probably going to have a chance to make a World Cup team at some point in your life,” Gomez said. “You surround yourself with the people you want to be like, right? Excellence continues to produce excellence.”