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Sunday, September 17, 2000
Archer from Utah bows out
Parker fails to qualify in solo competition
By Lee Benson
Deseret News columnist
SYDNEY — It was with one of those cruel backhands fate is liable to whack you with at any time, without warning, that Utahn Denise Parker bowed out of the women's individual archery competition Sunday morning at Olympic Park.
Denise Parker appears calm and cool as she practices Friday. But during a qualifying round on Saturday, pressure got the better of her.
Ravell Call, Deseret News |
She not only lost in the morning round of qualification . . . she lost to herself.
Officially, Parker was eliminated in the round of 32 by Karen Scavotto, a U.S. Olympic teammate from Connecticut. At 18, Scavotto is the baby of the team, a shooter who is all form and zero nerves.
"You know who she reminds me of?" Parker said of her new teammate on the eve of the Olympics.
"She reminds me of me."
When she started in the Olympic business in Seoul in 1988, the fastest man in the world was Carl Lewis, not Maurice Greene; the fastest woman was Flo-Jo, not Marion Jones; and the Soviet Union still had a team.
And Denise Parker was a 14-year-old Bingham Middle School eighth-grader who had no idea what she was doing.
Ah, the good old days.
She medaled that first year, and it not only looked easy, it was easy. The bronze medal she helped the U.S. women's team win in Seoul, the only women's team medal the United States has ever won, was shipped back home to Salt Lake City and safely stored away. She was all of 4-foot-10 when they draped that medal around her neck.
Twelve years later, Parker is 5-foot-6 and all grown up. She has a degree from Westminster College, a good job as marketing director for Hoyt USA, an archery equipment manufacturer headquartered in Salt Lake City, and an almost brand-new 2000 Montero Sport she likes to cruise around the valley in when she's not out shooting at bull's-eyes.
"I can't complain. Archery has been very good to me," Parker said, smiling broadly a few days ago at the archery grounds at Olympic Park.
The opening ceremonies of the Sydney Games were only hours away, the start of the archery competition less than two days away, and she and her personal coach, Tim Strickland, wanted to take the opportunity to huddle one last time. Work on last-minute technique and strategy. At this level, every little bit helps. It's one of those things you learn along the way.
But wisdom can have its downside.
"You know what I'd love?" said Parker as she reflected back to those days in Seoul when she didn't even know that things like pressure and stress and sports psychology existed. "I would love to combine my strength and experience that I have now with that attitude when I was 14."
She can still remember how it felt.
"You're absolutely fearless," she said, "You're just out there shooting, having fun. You don't think about tomorrow, you don't think about yesterday — you're lucky if you think about your last shot."
Now, like it or not, she thinks about every shot. Her age and modern archery demand it. New competition rules implemented after '88 in an attempt to shore up lagging spectator interest essentially turned the sport from medal play to match play. Almost every single arrow has the potential to send you on or send you home. For archers nowadays, it's the old Yogi Berra line, "Ninety percent of this game is half mental," and then some.
Denise Parker
Ravell Call, Deseret News |
All that thinking and the pressure it induces took its toll. After placing eighth both individually and with her team at her second Olympics in Barcelona in 1992, Parker
didn't qualify at all for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, finishing a mere ninth at the U.S. Trials.
She might have hung up her bow for good then and there but for her talent. She did take some time off to regroup, but she never stopped checking the tournament scores in the archery newsletters that arrived faithfully on her doorstep. "I'd think, 'I could beat those scores in my sleep,' " remembers Parker.
So she consulted a few psychologists and gave herself a good talking to and she did.
She qualified third at the U.S. Trials to make this year's Olympic team.
The No. 1 qualifier was Scavotto.
Parker remains a member of the team — and full team competition is yet to come. But that she and Scavotto should meet on the first day of individual archery competition, and that Scavotto should be Parker's eliminator, is irony at its best (or worst). For the past week and a half, since their arrival in Sydney, it's been Scavotto that Parker has looked to for inspiration.
"Karen sees the cool things at the Olympics," Parker said. "She looks around and everything's cool. I remember being like that, too, the first time I came. I'd like to be like that again."
Lee Benson's column will run daily through the Sydney Olympics. E-mail him at benson@desnews.com.
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