Four years ago, she was recognized as the child prodigy of her sport - and, for that matter, of Olympic sports in the United States.
Barely bigger than the bow she used, Denise Parker at 13 was the youngest gold medalist at the 1987 Pan American Games, at 14 the youngest member of the 1988 Olympic team, at 15 the youngest medalist in the 1989 World Championships.Youth was Parker's calling card. It got her on the cover of Parade Magazine. It put her on the "Tonight Show," where she hit a lifesaver and an egg with an arrow at 15 paces. It earned her a trip to Japan, where she shot the flame out of a candle and put an arrow through the hole in a spinning 45-rpm record.
There were other rewards, too.
They had a Denise Parker Day at Bingham High School in South Jordan, Utah, after the Olympics. And was it only coincidence that Utah lowered its bow-hunting license age from 16 to 14 the year Parker turned 14?
This year, though, Parker isn't even the youngest archer at the U.S. Olympic Festival. At the wizened age of 17, she has given up that distinction to a 16-year-old boy, Staten Holmes of Houston.
"In a way, I'm glad to get rid of it," she said. "I was getting tired of being the youngest everything.
"Of course, there is more pressure now. Before, it was like, `You're here, you're so young.' Now it's like, `You're here, what can you do?' It's not enough to be young anymore. I'm almost as old as most of my (top) competitors."
Fortunately, Parker has gotten better as she matured. Her winning score at the Pan American Games was 1,262 (of a possible 1,440). She has improved that to a U.S. record 1,348.
A score that high meant she had hit the bull's-eye more than 80 percent of the time while shooting 36 arrows each at targets 30, 50, 60 and 70 meters away.
Strength is part of the difference. At 5 feet 5 inches and 120 pounds, or five inches taller and 30 pounds heavier than she was in 1987, Parker now can pull a bow strung under considerably more tension. That enables her arrows to fly at a flatter, faster trajectory, making them less susceptible to vagaries of weather conditions.
Parker also has discovered the thinking person's key to success in the sport.
"You just try to be brain dead when you shoot," she said. "You keep all your thoughts on the target. I've shot enough that my head knows what to do if I just let it."
That Parker consistently can put an arrow through a 5-inch-wide bull's-eye more than 230 feet away hasn't made much difference in her ability to put a basketball through a 18-inch-wide hoop at much closer range. She did, however, make the All-State team as a junior as a point guard for Bingham High.
"I'm not that good a shooter," she said. "I averaged about five points a game. I was more into assists. Archery takes up most of my time."
This summer, she will go from the Olympic Festival to the Junior World Championships in Norway to the Pan American Games in Cuba to the World Championships in Poland.
Why the Junior Worlds when she already has won a silver medal at the senior level?
"It's the first time they have had it, and it's my last chance because you have to be under 18," Parker said.
Ah, the ravages of age.
"Being part of things like this is great," she said. "I've been able to travel the world, and I'm only 17. You miss out on things, but you're still a kid."
Parker certainly made hunting deer with a bow seem like child's play.
On her first expedition, not long after the 1988 Olympics, Parker and her parents barely had left home before she spotted a deer near the road. She got out of the truck, fired from about 35 yards and put the arrow through the heart of a four-point buck. The dying deer rolled down a hill and landed almost at Parker's feet.
"My parents had been hunting seven years without anything, and I got one in five minutes," she said. "I looked at them like, `What's the big problem?"'
A year later, Parker bagged a seven-pointer.
The trophy she really wants, though, is an individual Olympic medal in 1992. The 1988 Olympics were her first major international tournament, and that inexperience played a role in Parker's inability to reach the quarterfinals. She did win a bronze medal in the team event.
Parker thinks her medal chances have been enhanced by a new, match-play format in final rounds of the Olympics. That will prevent her rivals, notably the South Korean women who swept the Olympic medals in 1988, from building an insurmountable lead in the early rounds.
Of course, Parker need not fret if she doesn't get that medal next year. Given the age parameters of her sport, she probably will have several more chances. After all, national teammate Ed Eliason is 53.
Eliason and Parker led the way into Saturday morning's Olympic Festival semifinals, for which 12 qualified in both the men's and women's competition. The top eight will make the Saturday afternoon finals.
In Friday's action, which consisted of twice firing nine arrows at each of four distances, Parker came within three points of her personal best in the second session. She shot 338 points of a possible 360.