Archery Club sees jump in popularity, prepares for upcoming competitions

Archery is not just for medieval times. The Wellesley College Archery Club may be one of the newest club sports on campus, but the size of their team is rapidly growing and looking forward to successful competitions later this year. 

The club started in 2005 and officially obtained its status as a PERA (Physical Education, Recreation, Athletics) Club last year, which allowed the team to hire an official olympic-class coach, E.G. LeBre. “E.G. helped us out a lot before he officially became our coach, which was great for the team,” Captain Gigi Hoagland ’13 said.

Team alumnae have gone on to achieve high honors in the archery world, including recent graduate Lucy Archer ’12, who placed 11th in indoor nationals. Hoagland hopes the team will continue to produce successful archers in the coming years.

The Archery Cub has vastly increased in size since its inception mostly due to the 12 first-years on the team, whose presence  brings the roster up to 30 members in total. Hoagland attributes this spike in new members to the posters advertising the club, featuring popular archers such as Katniss from The Hunger Games and Merida from Brave. Many have not had experience in archery before, but joined to experience a new sport. Amelia Winter ’15 joined the Archery Club a few weeks ago. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” she said. 

“I saw the archery team as a prospie, and thought it was cool. I also saw the cool Katniss posters [for the archery club] on campus,” Averi Gutierrez ’16 said.  

Hoagland, however, came to Wellesley as an experienced archer. She started at the age of eight and continued with the sport at Wellesley. 

The Archery Club functions as both a club sport and a competitive team. While practices are open to new members at any point throughout the year, not all of the players go to competitions regularly. 

“There are people who joined as first years who got to compete their first semester,” Hoagland said. “All of the e-board competes regularly, and they are all sophomores. The team is small and they get a lot of time to practice, so novice archers are able to build skills quickly.

“We get a lot more practice time than other colleges and universities,” Alexandria Lee ’15 said. When the team does have target time, they stay engaged and focused for the duration. 

The Archery Club practices from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays at the back of the fieldhouse in the Keohane Sports Center.

While the club team has a sizable roster, they are still looking for new members. “All our meetings are open, and there is no experience required,” Lee said.