Archery is a big part of my life. From weekdays to weekends. From mornings, afternoons, and evenings every single day. But there is one thing everyone and everything has to do, start from the beginning. Life has a beginning, animals have a beginning, even plants have a beginning, and that’s their birth. I was born into archery, the beginning of my archery career that will soon become much much more.
For me, this journey started in 3rd grade. My elementary school decided to start a team out of the blue, don’t mean to spoil it, but it stopped after a few weeks. Some people might say that I was too young to be a NASP archer in 3rd grade, well they are right, I was just given the opportunity by my 3rd-grade teacher to come and practice and not shoot in tournaments.
Just to fast forward a bit, in 4th grade, there was still no archery team at my school but my older sister decided to join the middle school archery team in 7th grade. I was given the opportunity to shoot some arrows down range with her team and I was ecstatic about it. When I was in 5th grade, covid hit, and I couldn’t go to a lot of their archery practices anymore. I went into middle school like nothing had happened until a few months into my 6th-grade year. The middle school started the archery team up again and I was more excited than ever. This time there were new coaches, new kids, and also new teachers, but this time they were people who supported me and brought the team back together, to its feet. My parents had become the coaches as well as one of my favorite 6th-grade teachers, tons of my middle school friends were on the team, and a lot of other kids who supported me and everyone else along the way. Without the support of everyone who helped in elementary school and the help given to the middle school to get back on their feet, then I wouldn’t be here writing this article or taking my hobby to a higher level. I wouldn’t have been able to fill my weekends and some of my weekdays with archery tournaments, practices, archery family time, or been able to hang out with some of my archery friends. I also wouldn’t have been able to meet some of the most best of friends I have now if it weren’t for me enjoying my interest in archery or the people who helped me get where I am.
Archery has also given me a chance to travel around my area and part of the US. I was fortunate enough to travel with my middle school team the past year and get to join them in shooting at both the state and national archery tournaments. The season ended there for both the middle and high school teams but over the summer I traveled to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to watch an individual from our high school team. It was an interesting and incredible experience to have.
I am currently in 9th grade and archery has been quite a journey for me. I hope to share that experience with everyone I can. I want to write about my experiences to share with everyone. I hope that everyone can have the enjoyable experience I have had so they can enjoy archery to in the ways I have. Archery is an incredible road to go down and I wouldn’t give it up for any other sport in the world.
