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PULLING STRINGS: Coach Sheri
Rhodes checks the bow with Jonson Yee, ’06.
Linda Cicero |
david lu shot his first
arrow two years ago—the day before he entered
his first archery tournament. The Stanford sophomore
didn’t medal in the competition, but he did place
fourth—in a field of 12-year-olds with comparable
skills.
Today Lu is a senior and veteran on the Stanford team
that was ranked third in the nation at last spring’s
U.S. Intercollegiate Archery Championship. He jokes
that he’s double majoring in mechanical engineering
and arrow-finding. “If you miss a target, your
arrow can really burrow into the grass,” Lu says.
Perhaps that’s why feathered fletchings come in
Day-Glo shades of orange, pink, green and yellow. Costing
between $1.25 and $50 apiece, today’s slipstream-sleek
arrows have aluminum shafts coated with carbon. And
they’re fixable, even in the middle of a tournament.
Lose an arrow point? Fire up a portable propane blowtorch
and reattach it with hot glue.
Just don’t get carried away with too much flight-corrective
bling-bling. “If you put a lot on an arrow, you’re
defeating the purpose of having a nice, light arrow
that flies to the target,” coach Sheri Rhodes
explains.
Rhodes, who guided the United States women’s archery
team at the Athens Olympics, was a huge factor in the
Cardinal’s unprecedented showing at the nationals.
She coached at Arizona State for 17 years before deciding
last year to make the twice-weekly commute to the Farm
from her home in Sacramento. “These are people
who are enthusiastic and dedicated,” Rhodes says
about the Cardinal archers, who pratice on a shooting
range at El Camino Real and Serra Street. “I get
to live vicariously through them.”
Archery is more about brains than brawn, according to
Rhodes. “You need to develop mental tricks or
skills to be a top competitive archer, like programming
yourself to shoot the next arrow without regard for
where the last one went.”
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RIGHT ON TARGET: Germaine Hoe,
’04, Phoebe Suen, ’07, and Helen Cheng,
’04, walk back to the shooting line.
Linda Cicero |
Thanks to Rhodes’s expertise, the men’s
squad walked away with the bronze at nationals, sophomore
Sandra Tyan took home an individual All-American title,
and Rookie of the Year honors went to junior Kevin Ju.
Not bad for a club team that was formed in 2002 and
competes with long-standing varsity programs, such as
Texas A&M and James Madison University. Although
founding member Keith Coleman, ’02, has been competing
since he was 16, most of the 20 women and men on the
Stanford squad had never picked up a bow before a friend
dragged them to a practice session. Many say they heard
about the team from classmates in science and engineering
courses. “We probably have a disproportionate
number of mechanical engineering majors,” Coleman
says. “It definitely has a gadget appeal.”
This is not Robin Hood’s bow. Today’s elegant
recurve bows are no longer made of wood, but configured
with layers of laminated carbon and fiberglass. A device
on the bow determines the stiffness and tension of the
string, and archers take aim through a sight with crosshairs.
Compound bows come with magnifying and leveling devices
in their sights, plus built-in stabilizers that act
like shock absorbers. Sweetest of all would have to
be the “kisser button” on the string that
aligns with the archer’s lips when the bowstring
is fully drawn and ready to shoot.
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PERFECT AIM: Cheng is a past
president of the team.
Linda Cicero |
If the team has a nerdy rep, that’s okay with
members. They bring their favorite board game—Taboo—on
the road when they travel. At the nationals in Harrisonburg,
Va., Cardinal archers shied away from local bars in
favor of a monster parking lot. “There was a Super
Wal-Mart and we piled into shopping carts and had races
all night,” says Helen Cheng, ’04, a past
president of the team.
Each summer, team members coach the weeklong Junior
Olympic Archery Program for Bay Area kids to raise funds
for equipment and travel, and they practice six days
a week during the academic year. They now have their
crosshairs fixed on California’s State Indoor
Archery Championships and the U.S. Intercollegiate Archery
Championships in Georgia.
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