Six weeks. Two major titles. One archer on an unstoppable run.
When Danish compound ace Mathias Fullerton arrived at the Kentucky International Convention Center in Louisville for the 44th NFAA Indoor National Championships, he did so as the reigning 2024 Vegas Shoot champion — having claimed that crown just six weeks earlier at the South Point Hotel and Casino. What unfolded over March 15–17 was not a repeat performance so much as a continuation of the same relentless standard: perfect arrow after perfect arrow, until 19 other world-class archers had been eliminated around him and only Fullerton remained standing.
He left Louisville as the NFAA Indoor National Champion in the Professional Male Freestyle division — the biggest domestic indoor title in American archery — and did so in a fashion that served notice to every compound archer on the planet that 2024 was shaping up to be his year.
The Numbers
The NFAA Indoor Nationals uses the iconic blue and white 5-spot target face — three circular spots, each worth a maximum of 10 points — shot at 20 yards. Professionals shoot two NFAA 300 rounds across two days (60 arrows per day, 12 ends of five), for a maximum combined score of 600 points with 120 Xs. Ties are broken by a cumulative shoot-off.
Fullerton's scorecard over the two competitive days at Louisville told the story plainly:
- Day 1: 300 / 1X (top qualifier from his lane, achieving a perfect 300 with the fewest Xs used in his group)
- Day 2: 300 / 1X
- Shoot-off: 174 / 1X — winning by a single point over Jeff Raney (173)
- Total: 600 points, 120 Xs
Every single one of Fullerton's 120 arrows over the two regulation days found the 10-ring. Not once — across 120 shots — did an arrow stray outside the blue centre circles. The entire Professional Male Freestyle field was so deep at this level that 19 other archers also shot perfect 600s with 120 Xs, triggering the shoot-off that decided the champion. It was only in those decisive cumulative shoot-off arrows — where Fullerton outscored Jeff Raney (Kansas) 174-173 by a single point — that any separation was possible.
The Shoot-Off
The shoot-off at the NFAA Indoor Nationals works differently to the Vegas Shoot shootdown. All 20 archers who tied at 600/120X shot simultaneously, with every arrow recorded and accumulated. The archer with the highest cumulative score at the conclusion of the shoot-off wins — meaning a single extra X, a single point on the very edge of the scoring ring, can be the difference between a national title and second place.
That is exactly what happened. Fullerton shot 174 to Raney's 173 — a margin of one point across the entirety of the shoot-off — with Isaac Sullivan (Vermont) claiming third at 124 in the simultaneous elimination format. World-class names including Chris Perkins (Canada), Mike Schloesser (Netherlands), and 2023 Vegas champion Kris Schaff all went through the same 600/120X qualification but were separated in the shoot-off: Perkins and Schloesser tied for 4th on 99, while Schaff finished 6th on 98. The depth of the 2024 Professional Male Freestyle field at Louisville was arguably the strongest in the NFAA Indoor Nationals' 44-year history.
Who Is Mathias Fullerton?
Mathias Fullerton, from Denmark, is one of the most consistent compound archers on the planet — a fixture at the very top of the Indoor Archery World Series, an Indoor World Series champion, and now a double-major winner in the span of just six weeks. Tall, methodical, and renowned for his ability to perform under pressure in shoot-off environments, Fullerton has been a podium presence at every major indoor event he has entered since his early twenties.
His compound technique is built on an exceptionally quiet shot — minimal movement, consistent anchor, and a back-tension release process that has produced some of the most statistically reliable scoring profiles in indoor archery. His 2024 Vegas Shoot win — which came just six weeks before Louisville — was itself achieved through a multi-end shootdown against a world-class field. The fact that he then followed it immediately with a NFAA Indoor National title underlined not just his physical skill, but his mental architecture: the ability to reset, travel, prepare, and perform at the highest level within the same narrow competitive window.
In the 2026 Indoor Archery World Series, Fullerton won both the Rio Indoor 250 and the Merida IWS 500 to lead the season standings heading into the Las Vegas finale — proof that his Louisville form was no flash in the pan but the beginning of a sustained multi-year run at the very peak of the discipline.
Key Moments
- 120 perfect arrows over the two regulation days — a clean 600/120X shared with 19 other world-class professionals, a testament to the extraordinary standard in the 2024 field.
- 174-173 in the shoot-off — winning the national championship by a single point, the tightest possible margin in compound indoor archery.
- Back-to-back major titles in six weeks: 2024 Vegas Shoot (February) followed by 2024 NFAA Indoor National Championship (March) — one of the most impressive short-run double hauls in compound archery in recent years.
- The shoot-off field included names such as Schloesser, Perkins, Schaff, and Raney — meaning Fullerton's title was earned against arguably the deepest shoot-off field ever assembled at the NFAA Indoor Nationals.
What It Means
For Fullerton, the Louisville title confirmed what the Vegas win had suggested: he was the form archer of the 2023–24 indoor season and one of the two or three best compound archers in the world over 18 metres. For the NFAA Indoor Nationals, the presence of a genuine world-class international cast — Schloesser, Perkins, Fullerton — in the professional field raised the event's global profile and delivered a shoot-off of a quality rarely seen at a domestic national championship anywhere in the world.
Fullerton returns to Louisville and the NFAA stage as one of the benchmarks against which every other compound professional now measures themselves.