Fall 2019 was a busy and productive semester for Trojan Archery! The fall semester is always an important time for training and preparing for Spring 2020’s indoor and outdoor season, and this year was no exception. In addition to recruiting new team members, we’ve made lots of positive changes this year in order to make our team one of the best. From implementing team workouts to coaching workshops, our team is making strides to shoot well and shoot strong!

Club Updates

We started out the semester welcoming many new USC students to the club – undergrad, graduate, and PhD students alike! Despite how hot it was in the gym during September, we had over two hundred new faces at our beginner practices.

Many of them are now official members of the club, and we’ve had a great time getting to know each other, improving as athletes, and helping everyone explore different bow styles. Our new coaches have been leading the charge in recreational archer development, especially in weekly group classes! A number of our new archers even made it to qualifiers for the SoCal Indoor Archery Collegiate Championship (SIACC), and we couldn’t be prouder of how much they’ve accomplished in just a few months!

In addition to an increase of club members, we also have had an increase in club USA Archery Certified Instructors! Thanks to the guidance of Simon Trinh, our 2019-2020 Director of Education and USA Archery Level 2 Instructor Trainer, we extend our congratulations to five of our club members for making the huge jump to becoming certified USA Archery Instructors this past December! Trojan Archery is extremely grateful for all the hours our volunteer instructor staff have put in this semester helping archers stay safe and shoot more every single week of the academic year. Currently, all of our instructors are students who are balancing busy school lives on top of archery, so if you are a club member or alumni who wants to get more involved with Trojan Archery, we need you! Contact us to learn more about how to get involved and how you can also receive USA Archery Instructor Certification through our archery education program. Our coaching staff would be more than happy to talk to you.

Trojan Archery also collaborated with other USC student organizations on campus this semester. USC’s own Trojan Stunt Team stopped by, and their group of martial artists, actors, and archers were able to get a crash course (no pun intended) on how to look like real, experienced archers on camera. We hope to see them performing the NTS shot cycle at the future Hollywood box office – make us proud!

We also had the pleasure of working with USC’s Department of Public Safety. Thanks for stopping by, Officer Rick! He embraced the more traditional bow and arrow like a pro. We look forward to welcoming back more USC faculty and staff in the future to take part in a great stress management and group bonding activity. If you’d like to collaborate with us, shoot us an email at archery@usc.edu – we’re excited to have new groups try archery!

Getting Ready for Competition Season

Trojan Archery hosted the first qualifier for SIACC in November, welcoming several SoCal Collegiate Teams to our home ground at Easton Rancho Park. Later in November, our team had a strong showing at the qualifiers hosted by UC Long Beach and UCLA.

We’re especially proud of our teammates who made it to the top of their divisions: Aadi Ghildiyal in 1st for Women’s Recurve, Michelle DeMers in 3rd for Women’s Recurve, Dan Kwasniewski in 2nd for Men’s Recurve, Mac Whitaker in 2nd for Men’s Barebow, and Mingyu (Caesar) Cui in the top 10 for Men’s Barebow. Elizabeth Loxterkamp and Audrey Zhao were also able to rise to the top of their flights in Women’s Recurve and Women’s Compound respectively. We’re also extremely pleased to see our other team members training vigorously and know that they will absolutely crush in our upcoming competitions in the Spring.

The whole team is looking forward to SIACC on January 18th where we’re all hoping to show off our hard work this semester and take home medals in our flights!

New to the club – Team Development Workshops!

This year, our coaches have also put in the effort on the never-ending quest of self-improvement, and they have the certifications to show for it. We now have the largest number of coaches ever in the history of Trojan Archery with two Level 4 NTS coaches and five Level 3 coaches! In addition, several team members have stepped up their game and earned Level 2 instructor certifications to help with weekly on-campus practices and first-time archers making the transition to being new team members. With their help, we have been able to provide more frequent and more personalized teaching for both club and team members alike!

We owe a lot of thanks to our coaches this semester, who have all put in the time and effort to make us better archers. New this semester is our workshop series, hosted by our coaches, in order to teach us more about important but often overlooked aspects of archery. This semester, they’ve covered mental management, an in-depth look at the NTS shot process, and strength training and injury prevention, led by Coaches Alex Aloia, Dan Kwasniewski, and Max Zade, respectively. These workshops are open to anyone, and we had fellow archers from other SoCal schools attend! We love a little collegiate archery collaboration. If you are interested in attending our workshops for next semester (Coach Huy is planning one for tuning!), please contact us at archery@usc.edu. Alternatively, check out our Facebook page to keep up with the latest information, where we’ll post announcements on the workshops as they’re coming up.

Wrap Up

In addition to all our hard work, Trojan Archery knows how to work hard and play hard! This semester, we hosted our 15th Annual Halloween Shoot, where our club members dressed up in costumes, carved pumpkins, and, of course, ate way too much candy!

We also ended the semester on a high note, taking the team out for an ice-skating social (thankfully nobody had any disastrous falls!). Keep an eye out for our antics next semester—you just might see a few cupids running around on Valentine’s Day.

There are lots of competitions and events coming up for us in Spring 2020, and we hope you’ll stick around! If you’d like to see more fun updates from us, you can join our mailing list and find us on Facebook and Instagram at @trojanarchery.

Shoot On!