NPHS archers target strong mentality
Breathe in, find your stance, and breathe out. In again pulling back the bow, and out. All that’s left is to line up the tip of the arrow to the center of the target. With the release, a sigh of relief is exhaled. Archers shoot arrow after arrow, moving through the physical motions, making corrections and adjustments each time. Simultaneously, as their feet are grounded, thoughts are racing through their minds.
Riley Shin, sophomore, Annette Rhee, junior, and Michelle Wu, junior, attend Newbury Park High School (NPHS) during the week. But on Saturday afternoons, the three of them are practicing at their archery club, Joy Lee Archery Academy. The club, where the archers practice for hours at a time, is 40 minutes from Newbury Park, making archery a commitment in many aspects. “I think financially, it’s really expensive, but also the bows are a lot heavier to pull back than you think. [You] have to strength train […] and it takes a lot of my time,” Rhee said.
Archery in itself is a niche sport that only a handful of NPHS students participate in. It is also unique in that archers can shoot year-round. “[At practice,] depending on the season, we’ll go to either outdoor distances, which is like 70 meters, or we’ll go to indoor distances, 20 meters,” Wu said. Though a growing sport, archery remains a tight-knit community. “It’s a small-scale sport. Basically, you know everybody, and everybody knows you. […] Sometimes in national tournaments, I’m walking around trying to find a friend from New Jersey that I haven’t talked to in like, six months,” Wu said.
While archery requires physical training, archers are strengthening their mindset at the same time. “It’s such an objective sport because there’s a score. So definitely sometimes, when you don’t score that well, it’s getting over that mental block to just return to your form and concentrate on your process,” Shin said.
Any experience in life can provide insight and lessons can be learned anywhere: the classroom, the field, a random aisle in the grocery store, or in this case, standing in front of the target. “‘It’s okay if I screwed up that arrow. I’ll have to make sure my next arrow hits the head.’ You have to have that mentality. You can’t dwell on your past mistakes and I feel like that goes into daily life as well,” Wu said.
Although where an arrow hits may seem to result solely from the archer’s aim, far more goes into a singular shot. “Really, you know where your arrow is going to go. It’s just a matter of doing your process right, like the settings that you tune to your bow. […] It’s specifically tuned to your process, or your mental process at least, so if you don’t follow through with that, the arrow kind of goes off,” Rhee said.
