By Taylor Phillips
Sports Editor
Mira Costa junior Kristen Kim strikes the bullseye as she competes and practices archery at a local practice facility in Pasadena.
When Kim was younger, her parents always encouraged her to play physical sports such as soccer. Kim never really loved to play those sports and her parents still wanted her to play some kind of sport in her free time.
“I tried soccer, basketball, volleyball, and none of those worked out [for me],” Kim said. “I wanted to try archery because I was watching the movie, The Hunger Games and I was really interested in learning how [use a bow and arrow].”
Kim heard about archery through her Korean school and she decided to give it a try. Archery was something new and different for Kim, but she really enjoyed herself and found that she was very good at it.
“I go to Korean school and they offer other activities, so I decided to join their team,” Kim said. “After I joined the team, they told me that there was an archery team near my church, which is in Pasadena, and I decided that I would join their team.”
Kim trains at a local facility in Pasadena. She practices for three hours a week on Fridays and her competitions are usually local every other weekend.
Sometimes it’s really hard to find other archery teams in the area,” Kim said. “But when we do find a competitor, they usually come to compete at our [facility] or we travel to them. The competitions are either team format or one versus one.”
Kim competes with her team in local events and her teammates are from all around Los Angeles. The events are usually one archer vs the other to see which archer hits the most arrows on the target or they compete as a team and count how many arrows the team has scored in total.
“I think that one of our toughest competitions was against a team from Gardena,” Kim said. “You play based on your age level and it always fluctuates. In this competition, we were playing against archers who were in college and it was very tough.”
Kim enjoys archery and wants to continue to participate in archery throughout her high school career. Archery has been an amazing opportunity for Kim and she really enjoys being apart of her team.
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