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Junior Grace Guthrie standing next to her teammates. "I love archery because I love sports, although I'm not that good at them," Guthrie said. "Archery is something you can practice and get better at." (Quote correction from print edition.)
Athletes each have their own reasons to pursue a sport. Archers are no different.
After three years, junior Shannon Gabriel and her teammates are motivated to get their sport—archery—officially recognized at North.
“If it did become a sport, I would hope we would practice more and give us more opportunities,” Gabriel said.
The team only practices for one hour once a week. Meeting locations change and move between North’s tennis courts and South Lake Middle School, depending on which space is more accessible. Since archery is currently just a club, members aren’t required to meet on a regular basis.
Although there are some disadvantages to practicing once a week, junior Grace Guthrie believes it brings the team together and makes them better.
“Last year we were a very close group,” Guthrie said. “We were starting to get comfortable with each other as the season went on. We were all cheering each other (on) when we were getting our awards in some of matches we went to,” Guthrie said. “We are just starting to get better because we only have the availability to meet once a week currently.”
However, turning the club into an official school-sanctioned sport could pose some problems, starting with coach Nick Di Cresce. Di Cresce has 22 years of experience as an archery coach and has been with the club for all three years of its existence.
However, Di Cresce also coaches both the Wayne State archery team as well as the Motor City Archers, one of the largest junior archery programs in the state. In addition to that, he runs a range in Farmington Hills, which would make it impossible for him to be at practices for an actual team at North.
Because of his limited availability, Di Cresce said that the change from club to official sport would not affect him as much as the school.
“The spring archery season for high school is 10 weeks, so it’s not that bad. It’s 10 weeks in the spring, so you keep busy. It’s one day a week as a team, but they can practice as much as they want for four to five days a week,” Di Cresce said. “The ones who want to put in time can, so it won’t affect me so much. It will mostly affect the school because it’ll take up more space for the school.”
On the other hand, turning the club into a sport also presents certain benefits. The possibility of earning a varsity letter is intriguing to some members. Once a team grows enough, it will come down to the top five archers to earn most of the points in matches.
But before any competition can develop, current members must recruit more students to the club. This will increase their likelihood of becoming an official team. As the team grows, more students will be able to push to make archery an official sport.
When new people join, Gabriel and the other veterans make sure to guide them and make them feel comfortable.
“When you first start archery, you’re not all that great,” she said. “But after a couple of weeks … it steals your heart, and it’s a wonderful sport, and they should keep going with it.”
