The lights of the Las Vegas Strip had nothing on the electricity crackling inside the South Point Hotel and Casino arena when the final arrow of the 2023 Vegas Shoot was loosed. With $57,000 on the line in the compound open shootdown — and a crowd described by commentators as the biggest in the event's history — 30-year-old American Kris Schaff drilled a perfect 10 to end a seven-end war against former champion Kyle Douglas, turned around, and embraced a grinning Brady Ellison waiting just outside the field of play.
"I've wanted this ever since I was little," said Schaff moments after his win. "I've shot a ton of arrows this year and it's paid off." With those words, one of the most emotionally charged Vegas Shoot victories in recent memory was complete. Over 3,900 archers competed across the week — the largest field in the history of the tournament — making the 2023 edition a record-breaking milestone for the NFAA Foundation's flagship event at the South Point.
Competition Format
- Venue: South Point Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada — the tournament's long-time home, with multiple shooting arenas spread throughout the resort.
- Duration: February 3–5, 2023 — three days of competition, 30 arrows per day, for a maximum total of 90 arrows and 900 points.
- Target face: The Vegas 3-spot — three vertically stacked circular targets on a single face, shot at 18 metres. Each arrow scores a maximum of 10 (X-ring or outer gold ring), with the X counted as a tiebreaker in regular qualification. Maximum score per day is 300; maximum over three days is 900.
- Scoring: In regular qualification, both the X (inner yellow circle) and the outer gold ring score 10. The X is recorded separately as a tiebreaker. Any arrow outside the gold scores 9 or less.
- Shootdown: Any archer tied at 900 after the 90-arrow qualification round enters the championship shootdown. Once in the shootdown, X-ring-only scoring takes effect — only an arrow in the small inner X-ring counts as a 10; the outer gold ring drops to a 9. This instantly separates archers who have been flawless for 90 arrows and raises the pressure dramatically with every end.
- Lucky Dog: One additional spot in the shootdown is earned by the archer who shot 899 — one dropped point — and then wins a closest-to-centre elimination among all other 899 shooters.
- Prize money: $57,000 in the compound open event alone, with additional prize pools across all divisions. Including sponsor contingency, Schaff's total take-home exceeded $100,000.
The Road to the Shootdown
The standard of shooting across the three-day qualification round was extraordinary. A remarkable 25 men shot perfect 900s over their 90 qualification arrows — meaning they had not missed the large 10-ring a single time in 90 consecutive shots. They were joined by the Lucky Dog winner, Remington Boyer (USA), who had carded 899 but won the closest-to-centre tiebreak to earn the final spot in the arena. That made 26 men in total stepping onto the line for the shootdown with a combined record of 24,975 tens out of 24,975 arrows shot.
The 26-man shootdown roster read like a who's-who of the compound archery world: reigning World Archery Champion Nico Wiener (Austria), reigning Vegas champion Bodie Turner (USA), two-time Vegas champion Kyle Douglas (USA), former World Archery Champions Stephan Hansen (Denmark), James Lutz (USA) and Chris Perkins (Canada), multiple Hyundai Archery World Cup champion Braden Gellenthien (USA), Pan American Games champion Roberto Hernandez (El Salvador), and Indoor Archery World Series contender Mathias Fullerton (Denmark) — among others.
Compound Open — The Shootdown
From the opening end, with X-ring scoring now in effect, the field began to thin. Only one archer was eliminated on the first pass under standard scoring, but once the X-ring rules took hold, nine archers — including heavy favourites Jacob Marlow and Braden Gellenthien — were cut in a single end. Nine more fell in the following end: Lucky Dog Remington Boyer, Tim Hanley, and others who had been flawless for 99 arrows found their first nine at the worst possible moment.
That left seven archers on the line — all of whom had shot nothing but perfect tens for 99 arrows. Then the pressure struck again. In the next end, three of them buckled. The defending champion, Bodie Turner, was among those eliminated — one of the biggest shocks of the afternoon. Four men remained: Kyle Douglas, Kris Schaff, Tim Jevsnik, and Mathias Fullerton.
In the fifth end, both Jevsnik and Fullerton each shot a nine. The Slovenian, Jevsnik, would ultimately edge Fullerton in the three-place tiebreak. That left the 2023 Vegas Shoot as a head-to-head battle between Kyle Douglas and Kris Schaff — the two most composed archers remaining.
Across six more high-stakes arrows, they pushed each other to the limit. Schaff dropped a nine on his second arrow of the duel, and Douglas matched him with a nine of his own. Both then anchored tens to close the end in a 29-29 tie. In the next end, Douglas missed on his second arrow again. Schaff answered with three clean, decisive shots for a perfect 30 — and the 2023 Vegas Shoot was his.
The title was Schaff's crowning achievement after a remarkable hot streak: just weeks earlier he had won the Sud de France Archery Tournament at Nimes — the first stop of the 2023 Indoor Archery World Series — and now he had added the most coveted title in American indoor archery. His previous best result in Las Vegas had been second place in 2018. His total winnings for the weekend, including sponsor contingencies, exceeded $100,000.
Championship Compound Open Podium
- 🥇 Gold: Kris Schaff (USA)
- 🥈 Silver: Kyle Douglas (USA)
- 🥉 Bronze: Tim Jevsnik (Slovenia)
Compound Women — Gellenthien Claims Second Vegas Crown
In the compound women's event, two archers stood out from the entire 3,900-strong field as the only women to finish with perfect 900s after 90 arrows: Paige Pearce (USA) and Tanja Gellenthien (Denmark). The pair had comprised two-thirds of the previous year's compound women's shootdown alongside eventual winner Liko Arreola — and here they were again, back in the arena for a rematch.
It was a final of ice-cold nerves. In the first end of the shootdown, neither archer dropped a single point — both drilling their arrows with surgical precision under the arena lights. But in the second end, Pearce's composure finally cracked: a nine, low out of the 10-ring on her last arrow. She shook her head and watched Gellenthien step up, control her breathing, and deliver a clean, small 10. It was over.
"It's obviously the biggest tournament of the year and the one that everyone wants to win," said Gellenthien after her second Vegas title, following her first in 2017. "My mental game was to stay focused and run the routine that I do during practice because I know that's what works." It was a masterclass in controlled pressure shooting from the Danish champion — a mental blueprint for anyone wanting to learn what it takes to win in Las Vegas.
Championship Compound Women Podium
- 🥇 Gold: Tanja Gellenthien (Denmark)
- 🥈 Silver: Paige Pearce (USA)
- 🥉 Bronze: Elisa Roner (Italy)
Recurve and Other Championship Events
Brazil's Marcus D'Almeida — one of the most consistent recurve archers on the planet and a podium fixture on the Hyundai Archery World Cup circuit — claimed the recurve men's championship title, adding Vegas to a collection that already included multiple World Cup victories and Olympic appearances. D'Almeida's composed performance through the three-day qualification and shootdown underlined his status as one of the top recurve men in the world heading into the 2023 outdoor season.
Korea's Park Somin took the recurve women's championship title, continuing her country's historic dominance of women's recurve archery on the international stage. The Korean Women's Team's depth has long been unmatched globally, and Park Somin's Vegas gold was another testament to that programme's extraordinary consistency.
Full Championship Division Podiums — 2023
- Compound Open: 🥇 Kris Schaff (USA) — 🥈 Kyle Douglas (USA) — 🥉 Tim Jevsnik (Slovenia)
- Compound Women: 🥇 Tanja Gellenthien (Denmark) — 🥈 Paige Pearce (USA) — 🥉 Elisa Roner (Italy)
- Compound Senior: 🥇 Mark Rubio (USA)
- Compound Young Adult: 🥇 Dewey Hathaway (USA)
- Recurve Men: 🥇 Marcus D'Almeida (Brazil)
- Recurve Women: 🥇 Park Somin (Korea)
- Recurve Young Adult: 🥇 Osvaldo Ramirez
- Barebow Open: 🥇 Jeremiah Jones (USA)
Collegiate Competition
Alongside the main championship and flight divisions, the 2023 Vegas Shoot hosted one of the most well-attended collegiate archery competitions in the tournament's history, drawing student-athletes from universities and colleges across the United States. The collegiate programme runs in parallel to the main event: collegiate archers compete directly within the championship or flight pools against all other registered archers, and their scores over the first two days of competition are extracted to create separate collegiate standings — meaning every student on the South Point floor is simultaneously competing for a national collegiate title.
Eight individual collegiate divisions were contested in 2023, covering four equipment styles in male and female categories:
- Collegiate Compound Male and Female
- Collegiate Recurve Male and Female
- Collegiate Recurve Barebow Male and Female
- Collegiate Bowhunter Male and Female
In addition to individual titles, schools were ranked on a cumulative team score — calculated by taking the top individual score from each school in each equipment division and adding them together. The top three schools received team scholarships of $750, $500, and $300 respectively. Individual collegiate scholarship awards of $750 (1st), $500 (2nd), and $300 (3rd) were presented to the top three finishers in each division during the Junior & Collegiate Awards Ceremony held on Saturday evening, February 4, in the Championship Arena.
Notable University Performances
Grand Canyon University (GCU) sent eight Lopes to Las Vegas and achieved top-seven finishes in three of the eight collegiate divisions — their best team result at the event to that point. Two returning veterans anchored the GCU squad: senior Sequoia Ayers set two personal tournament records in the collegiate recurve barebow female division, earning a berth in the Flight 3 bracket for Sunday's finals action and finishing 6th in her division overall. Sophomore Keegan Spurlock mirrored that result in collegiate recurve barebow male, climbing from 9th after day one to 6th by Saturday, shooting exclusively nines and tens in Sunday's Flight 3 round. Senior newcomer Tiani Kow — competing in just her second archery tournament of any kind — made an immediate impression, finishing 7th in the collegiate bowhunter female division after earning a Sunday flight berth. "Everyone did really well in Vegas, even though we were more underprepared than last year," said GCU Student Head Coach Fletcher Bennett.
Coe College (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) sent four Kohawks to Las Vegas — Ryland Roy, Kyley Kordick, Rosie Cobb, and Alexia Morganti. All four competed in the main flight divisions alongside professionals and international archers, with their scores simultaneously counting toward the collegiate standings. Roy shot an impressive 886 points (49 tens) to finish 22nd in Flight 6, while Kordick shot 870 (30 tens) for 9th place in Flight 16 in the women's compound division. Rosie Cobb shot 849 (17 tens) to finish 17th in Flight 23, while Alexia Morganti posted 761 (5 tens) for 22nd in Flight 34. "This is the kind of event you shoot at to measure yourself against the best in the world," noted Coe's coaching staff. "It gives you this frame of reference and confidence — the fact that we can go there and be competitive."
The collegiate compound and recurve divisions drew their largest fields in years, reflecting the rapid growth of university archery programmes across the country — many of which use the Vegas Shoot as the highlight of their indoor competitive calendar. Full individual and team standings for all eight collegiate divisions from the 2023 Vegas Shoot are available via the official results portal at info.ianseo.net.
Key Takeaways
- Over 3,900 archers competed in the 2023 Vegas Shoot — the largest field in the tournament's history — a testament to the event's unmatched status in the global indoor archery calendar.
- Kris Schaff's comeback was the story of the season: ranked outside the world top 10 since early 2022, his double-major month — Nimes IWS followed by Vegas — was one of the most impressive individual hot streaks in recent compound archery history. He took home over $100,000 including contingencies.
- The compound open shootdown delivered 26 perfect 900 qualifiers, including the Lucky Dog — a reflection of the deepest field of compound archers ever assembled at the South Point arena.
- Defending champion Bodie Turner's elimination in the fourth end was the day's biggest shock — the reigning champion going out on a nine with four other elite archers still on the line.
- Tanja Gellenthien's second Vegas crown — achieved by drilling the decisive 10 while Paige Pearce dropped a nine in the second end — was a masterclass in composure that will be studied by compound archers for years.
- Brady Ellison's quiet presence just outside the field of play — there specifically to encourage and support Schaff in his moment of need — was one of the warmest moments of the weekend, revealing the bonds of genuine friendship that exist at the elite level of the sport.
- With the 2023 outdoor season now on the horizon, Schaff's Vegas momentum and Gellenthien's title retention put both names at the very top of the indoor-to-outdoor form guide heading into the World Cup circuit.
- The collegiate programme drew its most competitive field in years across eight divisions, with Grand Canyon University's three top-seven finishes and Coe College's strong compound flight placements highlighting the growing strength of university archery programmes at the national level.