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Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Two UF students headed to world collegiate archery match

<p><span>Robert Regojo and Rachel Bouchillon, a 22-year-old UF environmental science graduate student, practice on a range behind Bear Archery’s headquarters in Gainesville.&nbsp;</span></p>
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Robert Regojo and Rachel Bouchillon, a 22-year-old UF environmental science graduate student, practice on a range behind Bear Archery’s headquarters in Gainesville. 

 

When Lauren Kates was younger, she shot arrows at milk jugs with her friends in her backyard. Now, she’s going to shoot against some of the best archers in the world. 

She and her teammate Rachel Bouchillon are representing UF at the World University Championships in Poland on July 4-6. It is the only big, world event for college archery students, and Kates and Bouchillon are the first UF students to make the U.S. team.

“I’m really excited to represent my country and my school,” Kates said.  

This is the first time the two archers have tried out for the national university team.

Although it was expensive to travel to the preliminary trials in South Dakota, both Kates and Bouchillon received scholarships to cover the cost of the trip.   

Kates said that experience showed her things that she really needed to work on with her game. 

“The winds were up to 40 miles per hour,” she said. “I’d never shot in anything like that before.”  

When it’s really windy, Kates said that the only thing to do is just hope the arrow hits the target, which was a difficult task during the trials. 

“Constantly missing the target bale was kind of a shock for me,” Kates said. “That’s not something I do very often.” 

They knew that if they made it on the world team, it would be an opportunity they couldn’t pass on. 

“This is my last year at university,” Kates said. “I’m hoping it will be a launching point into more higher-level competitions.” 

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The girls said that they would like to continue to compete but also know that archery will always be an important part in both of their lives.

“I’m kind of at a crossroads right now deciding what I want to do after I graduate (from) the master’s program,” Bouchillon said.

She said she could to go into a biology-related field, but she could also take a break from school and see where archery takes her.

“It’s really become a part of what I do outside of school that pretty much defines me,” Bouchillion said. 

She shot a little bit when she was younger but got addicted to the sport in her freshman year at UF. 

“I just ended up loving it,” Bouchillon said. “The more I shot, the more I wanted to shoot, the more I wanted to compete.”

[A version of this story ran on page 4 on 6/3/2014 under the headline "Two UF students headed to world collegiate archery match"]

Robert Regojo and Rachel Bouchillon, a 22-year-old UF environmental science graduate student, practice on a range behind Bear Archery’s headquarters in Gainesville. 

 
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