“I was at a really pivotal point in my life with a lot of change happening in my life and this was something that I clung to,” said Tinnan, who is now based at her namesake Elizabeth Tinnan Mounted Archery club in Lewisburg, Tennessee, which has 40 active members. “It gave me empowerment and encouragement and something to focus on through all those changes.”
“I saw when I was able to start introducing people to this, I saw the lights come on, and the enjoyment on people’s faces. It just drew me closer and closer to it, to a point it was like a snowball effect.”
“I stumbled into all of it, and it was, in a way, serendipitous that this is what I feel like I was meant to be doing.”
Tinnan’s base in the south-east has made it a stronghold for horseback archery in the USA, but as part of her mandate to spread the sport as much as possible, she has helped set up clubs along the east coast, and in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and California, to name a few.
One club in the latter state, Poseidon’s Horse Archers at Hidden Creek Ranch, saw Tinnan run one of the very first sessions and, five years on, it has become an internationally regulated track which now hosts several national competitions a year.
The number of active Mounted Archery Association members fluctuates in the country between 500 and 600, with around 250 actively competing, and the number of USA entries for international competitions has risen from 21 in 2021 to 36 in 2024.
Tinnan says the sport in the USA has grown “rapidly” in the past decade and that the world championships being held at her home track next year in the Tennessee Valley was the ultimate vindication of its growth.
