Straight arrow: Gardner is No. 1 female para archer

One by one, the arrows whizzed through the humid July morning, past a junked pickup truck and an RV that had seen better days before reconvening in the center yellow circle of a target some 50 meters away from Wendy Gardner.

The target range set up behind her home on Holdens Cross Road outside Wilson was a bit unheralded for a shooter the caliber of Gardner, who is currently ranked No. 1 in the country by USA Archery in its Compound Para Women Open division. It’s been a rapid ascent in the world of competitive archery for the 50-year-old wife and mother who only took up the sport four years ago.

As a member of Para U.S. Archery Team, Gardner won gold and bronze medals at the Parapan-American Games in Chile last November, and this year alone, she has broken five national records in tournaments around the country.

Still, as her archery career continues to rise, Gardner is going to have to wait four more years to get her shot at the ultimate competition — the Paralympics. Even with her lofty ranking and tournament results, Gardner just missed out on landing a spot on Team USA for the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games during trials earlier this summer. Now Gardner must wait for the 2028 Summer Paralympic Games in Los Angeles.

“It’s been tough because we came up short,” Gardner said, her bright smile belying her disappointment. “Every one we came up one spot short. That’s really kind of makes you feel defeated a little bit.”

SETTING STANDARDS

That’s not really a feeling Gardner has experienced much as a competitive archer since her first event in 2020. Gardner wasn’t an instant success but she improved at each competition.

“You’ve got a process you do every time you shoot an arrow,” she said, explaining her system of shooting. “You just continue with that whether you’re at home or in a competition. To me the biggest thing is, if I make a bad shot, you’ve got to let it go. It’s gone, there’s nothing you can do about it. If you keep dwelling on that, then it’s just going to be another one of them and another one of them. It’ll continue on.”

The challenge is ongoing, she said. Even with her success in 2023, Gardner said that she struggled with the mental aspects of the sport.

“This year I’ve been doing better but last year I’d really get bothered by a bad shot and I just would not let it go and like I said, it’ll just bring you down,” she said. “So this year I’ve really been like, OK, you know, that’s not like me to shoot like that. Something was wrong. I just think in my head. OK, let’s get back to shooting like we normally shoot.”

The results are evident. Gardner began her record-breaking year in January when she totaled 554 points to erase a two-year old mark in one Indoor 18-meter round in Compound Open Senior Female division, shooting 72 arrows over 12 flights. Gardner barely let it set before wiping out that record with another one, this time scoring 562 points in an 18-meter round Feb. 23 in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She also broke her own mark in the double round set in 2023 with 1,121 points.

Gardner set a new standard in the Compound Open Senior Female Outdoor 50-meter Round at a tournament May 10 in Newberry, Florida, with 674 points. That clipped her own mark of 672 set April 4 in Phoenix.

Gardner owns the 50-meter double round record as well, holding onto that one since she posted 1,291 points in Richmond, Virginia, on Aug. 18, 2021.

‘ARMLESS ARCHER’ INSPIRES

That her competitive spirit burns so brightly is a surprise since the closest Gardner got to an athletic competition growing up was as a member of the Perquimans County High marching band during the early 1990s.

“I like watching sports,” Gardner offered. “Growing up, my grandmother was a big, big, any kind of sports fan, so I would always to her house and we’d watch college basketball together. But physically, I was just not an athletic person.”

She did point out, however, that former MLB star Trot Nixon is her cousin, so there are some athletic genes in the family. Still, competitive anything, much less archery, was not something Gardner was pursuing after her life changed following the birth of her son in 2000. She suffered a hemorrhagic stroke that left her paralyzed on her left side. While Gardner has regained some mobility in her legs, she still can’t use her left arm.
Archery entered the picture through her daughter’s interest in the movie, “The Hunger Games,” while in middle school a few years ago. Shortly thereafter, the Gardners visited Las Vegas to watch the high-profile archery competition, the Vegas Shoot, and marveled at the performance of Matt Stutzman, “The Armless Archer.”

“I thought, wow, he just uses his feet!” Gardner recalled. “I can’t use that one arm so there has to be some way we can figure something out.”

BUILDING THE BRACE

Para archers have to craft their own modifications on their bows and they have to meet USA Archery standards. What Gardner had in her quiver, so to speak, was a top-notch mechanic/inventor in her husband, Gary.

“He’s very mechanical,” she said, amid the clutter of his workshop in their garage. “So we came home and he started researching and there’s not a lot of information. … And then he went right into making different things for me to try. I don’t know what model we’re on.”

Gary Gardner built a custom fiberglass brace that allows his wife to hold the bow with her left hand and pull the string back using a leather mouthpiece. While it looks confusing at first, Wendy Gardner has mastered the shooting technique. Her overall ranking is No. 9 for all Senior Female Compound Open archers, not just para archers.

“It’s just been hard. We’ve had so much stuff to figure out because of having to make the actual brace to shoot with,” she said. “So a lot of it’s just been trial and error, but it’s expensive!”

After creating a brace for his wife, Gary Gardner started getting requests from other archers to build one for them. Since then, the Gardners have started a nonprofit foundation to make custom braces to give to other competitive para archers. Gary usually accompanies his wife to tournaments for not only spousal support and coaching but also to fix any equipment issues that invariably crop up.

“All that stuff, I just hand it to Gary and say, ‘Fix it,” Wendy said with a grin. “I’m kinda like a NASCAR driver.”

REPRESENTING HER COUNTRY

While the Gardners have invested a fair amount of time, energy and certainly money in her archery career, it has paid off in ways that she could have never imagined years ago. Gardner said that her most exciting experience was wearing the red, white and blue for Team USA in the Parapan-American Games in Chile. She won a gold medal with Mixed Team Compound Open partner Kevin Polish of Pennsylvania (the top-ranked Compound Open Para male shooter in the country) and a bronze medal on her own.

“It’s indescribable,” she said. “Like, I don’t know how you even can convey what you’re feeling about it. Especially, like I said, coming from not a sporty person, to know that hey, I get to go off and represent our country. And I take it very seriously. I try to be a good ambassador.”

If she does accomplish her goal of becoming a Paralympian, Gardner won’t have to travel outside the U.S. for the next Summer Paralympic Games.

“L.A. ‘28!” Gardner proclaimed when asked where her focus will go next.

She’ll be plenty busy until then, practicing in the heat or cold, sometimes twice a day. While it is a grind at times, Gardner can’t imagine her life without archery now.

“Hey, you don’t know until you try,” she said. “Go try something new. That’s what I tell everybody. I didn’t know if I would like archery, but I did. And look what happened.”

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