Kennedy Graduate Peavy Learns Not to Take It on the Chin : Archery: State intermediate champion adjusts technique in preparation for moving up to the women’s division.

Most athletes suffer embarrassment en route to becoming winners, but Jennifer Peavy was literally losing face. If it takes blood, sweat and tears to get to the top, Peavy at least had the first part mastered.

Peavy, 17, an archer who recently graduated from Kennedy High School, has won the intermediate (under 18) division title in the last six major tournaments she entered. But every title required a bandage.

Peavy anchored the bow string so firmly against her jaw bone that when she released an arrow, the string opened up a never-healing wound on her chin. Soon, she was spraying blood, but never arrows. While it was painful for those around her to watch, it didn’t distract Peavy.

“It wasn’t pretty,” said Diana Heller, Peavy’s mother. “There was blood every time she shot.”

But Peavy came home last week from a junior elite team camp at the U.S. Olympic training center in Colorado Springs, Colo., with some good news: “Look, ma, scabs and scar tissue.”

“After the Olympic trials in May, Nancy Myrick (National Archery Assn. coach) came to me and said, ‘We’re going to work on your face when you get out to camp this summer,’ ” Peavy said. “Then, at the camp, Nancy and (resident athlete) Warren Ikesaki worked with me on changing my head position just a little bit.

“Now, I’m not ripping my chin up all the time. Look, it’s even starting to heal.”

Peavy is confident the adjustments in technique won’t take her out of the groove that began last year when she won the intermediate division at both the outdoor and indoor State meets. And this is a good time to make changes, because this summer is going to be a time of transition for Peavy, anyway.

On Sept. 15, she turns 18 and goes from being one of the top juniors in the country to just another face--unbloodied, hopefully--in the crowd of women archers. At the Olympic trials, for example, she finished 41st among 67 competitors.

“The level of competition is definitely a big step up,” she said. “I’m so used to competing against kids. But I didn’t really feel all that pressure at the trials because I was just there for the learning experience. I know that I’m a level below the top women. I just wanted to experience it, so in 1996, I won’t be going to the trials for the first time.”

On her bedroom door hangs a sign that reads:

1996 Olympic Summer Games

Archery

Gold, Gold, Gold, Gold, Gold

It would be a leap, but Peavy’s rise to the top of the junior ranks has been a ride on a skyrocket. Three and a half years ago, she had never seen a bow and arrow in the hands of anyone other than an Indian on television.

Her stepfather, David Heller, is a weekend archer who has competed off and on for years, but Peavy had never seen him shoot until January, 1989, when the family traveled to Las Vegas for an invitational meet.

“I had never even seen his bow,” Peavy said. “I had absolutely no clue what the sport was about, but I just sat there for a couple of days fascinated. I didn’t just watch him compete, I watched anyone shoot. It was so intriguing.”

That weekend, she also met Jay Barrs, who won a gold medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Barrs gave her an autographed poster that is framed in her bedroom. It says, “Best wishes and start shooting, Jay.”

Two weeks later, Peavy was at El Dorado Park in Long Beach, signing up for the Junior Olympic archery development program.

“Right away, everyone was telling her she had such great form, that she was a natural,” her mother said.

Peavy: “You wonder if they’re just stroking you, though.”

But Peavy indeed was a prodigy and quickly rose to the top of the junior ranks. Now, she will get one more round of shots as a favorite at the JOAD nationals Saturday and Sunday in Atlanta. Then it will be back to the middle of the pack when she turns 18.

“It will be very, very challenging,” she said. “There are a couple of little technique things I need to work on, but it’s mostly a matter of lots more practice. You need to shoot enough arrows every week to just know the way it feels, to be able to let it flow.” Peavy says she is also working on her mental approach. She’s never far from her “positive affirmation cards,” three-by-five note cards with words of optimism and goals.

“You read them often enough and you believe it,” she said.

Playing with the big kids--as Peavy describes her move up into the open competition--might be intimidating for most, but Peavy is a quick learner and has a knack for fitting in.

Although she had never swam a competitive or workout lap in her life, she decided to go out for the swim team her freshman year at Kennedy.

“I liked swimming and I didn’t want to take P.E.,” she says.

She made the varsity team as a backstroker her freshman season.

She started playing around with a tennis racket the summer after eighth grade and decided she would like to play tennis at Kennedy. Competing against girls who had been playing for years, not days, she made the junior varsity team as a freshman and the varsity as a sophomore.

But then she discovered archery and gave up the other sports to concentrate on the bow and arrows and books. She got only two Bs and the rest As at Kennedy and will attend Cal State Fullerton in August. Peavy says she’s thinking about majoring in engineering, but she spends more time thinking about getting a medal than a degree in four years.

“I don’t want to wait until 2000 to go to the Olympics,” she said. “My goal is 1996. You can’t make money in this sport and it takes a lot of work. But I really want to do this.”

There will be sacrifices, of course, but at least she won’t have to bleed while chasing her dream.