“I would definitely encourage more people to try archery,” says second year University of Birmingham student Roxana Sherahmad, “I was looking for the most outlandish sport that I could do […] and now I’m obsessed with it.”
Sherahmad is a second year Film and English Literature student at the University of Birmingham who was looking to find something to do away from her studies, tripping and falling straight into archery, a sport she describes as being “unique” within a university setting.
“Things like football you can do pretty much anywhere, whereas with archery or rock climbing – the two I was deciding between – you can only do at certain universities, so it was a unique opportunity.”
After visiting the taster session hosted by UB Archery, she instantly clicked with the sport, thinking “this is going to be it,” and so it was, with the 19-year-old still competing on the performance team a year on, as well as taking on the role of treasurer within the club.
Sherahmad competes in the BUCS archery championship within the ‘Toucan League’, a league which her “university originally started […] which is based over multiple legs in several different universities.”
“We recently had our first leg, which is the start of the indoor season, and it’s looking like it’s going to be pretty successful.”
“We’ve got both a novice and experienced team and so far we’re all doing pretty well.”
The club’s treasurer competes with a bare bow bow style, meaning that she prefers using a more minimalistic style of archery, using a dark red recurve bow with no aiming aids.
Away from the competitive side, Sherahmad also relishes in the communal aspect of the society, saying that: “We’re all very close and we all have a lot of socials and things like that, so we are a very close community.”
“Which is interesting because archery isn’t a team sport,” although the club have tried ways to make it more communal with “team awards where yourself and a teammate will be scored together, aiming to get a larger score for the whole team.”
It seems that archery is something that the 19-year-old has become incredibly passionate about over he first year at University, almost becoming an advocate for the sport.
“I’d definitely encourage more people to try archery. It’s a really great opportunity to try something unique and also the mental game of it is really beneficial for university as it’s a very focused sport.”
“The sense of community that comes with it and the chance to meet a bunch of different people that you would ever really interact with otherwise is also a great opportunity.”
The University of Gloucestershire doesn’t have an archery team, but based on Sherahmad’s words it seems like it would be an amazing sport to bring within the University’s directory of sports teams.
With the benefits of community, focus, and fun all coming together within the sport, are UOG missing out by not having archery as an extracurricular sport activity?
