Junior pursues archery on competitive level

While movies like “The Hunger Games” and “The Avengers” kindled an interest in archery for many people, junior Yena Jeong picked up the sport “before the surge of movie- or novel-influenced archers.” Now a cadet female Olympic recurve archer, Jeong grew up watching archery in the Olympics and has been fascinated with the sport ever since.

“It’s always interested me that something so old was reinvented into a modern sport that people can pursue today,” Jeong said.

She began archery in seventh grade, but considered it a recreational activity at the time; she shot with an informal club, where she first met SHS alumna Grace Kim. The summer before her freshman year, Jeong received training from Kim, who now shoots with the Columbia University archery team. Since then, Jeong has been coached by Hye-Yoon Park, an internationally renowned trainer and has attended numerous state and national competitions.

“For national competitions, there are definitely lots of people,” Jeong said. “Archery is still a burgeoning sport, so it’s not hard to see internationally famous archers at these competitions.”

Several times at these tournaments, she met Kisik Lee, the USA head coach for archery. With the members of her club, Jeong was invited to his house for dinner after one of her competitions.

“We discussed [Lee’s] method of teaching archery, the National Training System (NTS),” Jeong said. “We also got to talk to many important coaches about the different aspects of archery as well.”

In the spring of 2013, she placed second in the Olympic elimination rounds at the Gator Cup, a national tournament in Newberry, Fla., after beating many archers who were top five in the national ranking. That same year, Jeong was ranked among the top 15 archers in the country.

During her freshman and sophomore years, Jeong practiced around 10 hours a week. Because of her focus on academics this year, she hasn’t been able to practice as much and does not have a ranking. To qualify for one, she would have had  to go to a national tournament in Ohio on July 24, which she couldn’t attend due to her busy schedule.

“I’d like to continue doing archery [past high school], but I don’t know to what degree,” Jeong said. “I’d also like to get a teaching license, so I could teach other people how to shoot as well. That’s all in the future, though.”