I always liked stories of beginnings. I am still writing
mine in many ways but here is the very beginning.
Before I walked into 2020 archery for a weekend beginners’
course, I had never seen a bow.
I am not much of a sportsperson, actually not at all. I
played as a child of course, but stupid games invented in the spur of a moment
and I wasn’t very good at that either. If I see something hurling at me, my
instinct is to flee, even if it is as tiny as a ping pong ball. Now, I would
have thought that is natural but apparently not. So I grew up disliking sports,
watching or playing or in whichever way.
Last year during the Olympics, everyone was excited and
struggled to lay their hands on tickets to any sport they could think of as long
as it was part of the Olympics. I went too, but there's no story there. A few
friends of mine went to watch archery hoping to catch my country win a medal.
My country didn’t win a medal but the sport won a fan. One of my friends
suddenly became very interested in archery. He took up a weekend course and
then began shooting, once every week, then twice every week, and then
practically any day he could take time off. Every time I met him the
conversation would invariably turn to this mysterious sport I never even thought
about. A month later, I signed up for a weekend course. The very same day he
bought a bow, but just two days before he left London for good. Sadly, I never
saw the bow. I had to wait for a few more weeks before I saw one at the course.
But since the day I did, I couldn’t miss a weekend of shooting without making
up for it with an extra session somehow.
The moral of the story is that archery is not just any sport.
Even if you are bad at every other sport you might just be good at this one, as
I would like to think I am. So I hope it makes you think about stringing a bow for the first time. Or if you
already did, what’s your story?
And - oh - now I can actually watch others sports too! I guess
that’s a step forward.
2020 Archery Website
Junior Archery Website
2 comments:
Hi Pranava, good to have you on board the good ship Blog (goes that sound right?). It's always good to know how and why people start archery - there's an amazingly diverse mix of reasons.
As Asher said on my beginner's course: anybody can be good at archery if you put the time and effort in. I like that thought, even if I'm not yet good enough to consider myself "good". However, I'm having a great time doing it which I guess is all that matters! I hope you are too...
It is always interesting on know what gets people into archery and what effect the Olympics has on people.
http://coacharcher.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bbc-blog-annabel-veron-and-me.html
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