by Lavi Aulck
Sports Editor

Years ago, nine-year-old Glen Harris found himself fascinated as he watched a movie in which William Tell shot an apple off his son’s head.

Marveled by Tell’s skill, Harris decided to attempt the feat on his younger brother. After carving himself a bow and some arrows out of sticks he found in the local woods, Harris put the apple on his brother’s head and took the shot.

“Let’s just say he survived and we still speak to each other,” Harris said. “As disturbed as my parents were about the incident, they decided to get me formal lessons.”

Today, Harris with nearly 40 years of competitive experience teaches the lessons as he coaches SCC’s four-man archery team and advises SCC’s archery club.

“Archery is an intrinsic experience; it is internal,” Harris described. “It is non-body type specific, gender equitable, non-combative, and a lifetime sport.”

Frank Ow, a member of SCC’s archery team, agrees with Harris that archery is about both mind and body. “I chose to be an archer because it can help isolate me from the world and heal me mentally,” Ow said. “In archery, there is no

physical contact with your opponents because your only opponent is yourself.”

Ow and fellow SCC archery team members Young Hwang and Matt Wormer will be competing at the U.S. Intercollegiate Archery Championships (USIAC) National Archery Championships in Salt Lake City, Utah from Feb 29 to March 2.

Wormer is hoping that the experience of going to the competition will be fun as well as competitive. “There will be a lot of archers there at lots of different skill levels,” Wormer said. “It will be a really fun time - just meeting new faces and sharing a common interest with the people there.”

After the trip to Salt Lake City, the team will begin practicing for the USIAC World University Archery Championship Trials to be held in May in Elmer, New Jersey. The trips to Salt Lake City and New Jersey will both be funded by the archers themselves and Harris estimates that the trip to Utah will total about $2,200 for himself and the three archers.

“It’s difficult to fund for the competitions ourselves,” Hwang said. “I work full-time tutoring math to middle and high school students to pay for my tuition and competitions. I think the others on the team do same thing.”

The team has found that a lack of interest in archery on campus has brought little recognition to their recent efforts. Harris believes the problem is present with the Archery Club as well.

“Archery is not ‘mainstream’ in the U.S. though it is the national sport in other countries,” Harris said. “(The Archery club/ team) needs people and students that are interested in learning about themselves and what they are capable of accomplishing besides academics.”

The club meets every Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in room 3014 and is open to all SCC students regardless of skill level. Within the club itself though, there are several levels of membership. Competitive archers, meanwhile, must meet the requirements of SCC’s athletic department as well as national membership requirements.

James Wolff, the fourth member of the team, believes archery is a sport anyone can grow to love and encourages everyone to try it. “Once you try it, you will love it,” Wolff said. “It sounds so straight forward but that’s how it really is. Once you understand the safety involved and you start to learn, it is a blast. Coach Harris makes it even more fun by interjecting stuff from his own personal experience.”