Photo by Kamp Fender.
Lily Williams aims her bow and arrow during a Chelsea Archery Program practice at the Chelsea Community Center.
The sport of archery is seeing a flood of young faces nationwide, Chelsea resident and internationally competitive archer Phil Carter said.
“We’re seeing a bigger influx of kids than we’ve seen in years,” he said.
He has seen a similar trend in the Birmingham area, and he’s hoping the new archery park planned for the Chelsea Community Center will encourage even more growth.
Carter and his wife and son are all archers, and during the competitive season from February to August, they can be found at a tournament nearly every weekend, he said. He and his wife also have world titles to their names, Carter said.
“That has opened doors for me,” Carter said.
“If I could do this instead of work, I would.”
As a participant in the sport since age 14, Carter, now 60, said archery creates a tight-knit community that he has never seen elsewhere.
“It’s a big family. Everybody just takes care of everybody,” he said.
In fall 2017, Carter started a youth archery program at the Chelsea Community Center through the National Archery in Schools Program (NASP), to share the sport and encourage a similar community of archers in Shelby County. The program currently has about seven regular archers, he said, though it has to compete with other sports like football and cheer for kids’ time. A summer camp he put on this year had about 18 participants.
Archery practice is currently held in a small grassy area next to the community center parking lot. Kids ages 10 to 16 practice hitting targets with bows that range from traditional recurve bows to hunting bows that feature trigger releases and sights, similar to hunting rifles.
“It’s a discipline sport; the kids have to be disciplined, be mentally tough,” Carter said.
Some of Carter’s students have shot before, while others had never picked up a bow. He said most do it for fun, though some are interested in hunting or tournament competition.
Lily Williams, a homeschooled 10th-grader and Chelsea resident, shot a bow for the first time when she joined Carter’s class last fall. She bought a hunting bow of her own and is hoping to start competing soon.
Williams said she was intrigued because the sport “always seemed fun to me and cool.” She wants to compete to be part of the family that Carter often talks about during lessons.
Though his class is on the smaller side, Carter said he knows a number of young archers who regularly practice at the range in Oak Mountain State Park, and Hoover is also planning to build a range. The growing popularity of the sport prompted Mayor Tony Picklesimer and the city of Chelsea to include an archery park in the plans of a major update to the community center’s amenities.
Photo by Kamp Fender.
Members of the Chelsea Archery Program remove their arrows from targets during a practice.
The $3.2 million upgrades will include a splash pad, wading pool, pickleball courts, athletic fields, an amphitheater and playground. Picklesimer said the archery park will include 15 shooting stations and its own parking lot and restrooms.
Carter said the archery park will be shaded and have better facilities than their current setup, which he’s hoping will entice new archers and be “something that the entire area — Columbiana, Westover, Inverness — they could all come and use it.”
“I think that it’s great that they [the city of Chelsea] have done that,” Carter said.
The timeline for completion of the community center project has not been established, but Carter said he’s hoping to convince the city to put the archery park near the top of the to-do list.
Picklesimer has said previously that he hopes to have some construction start by the end of 2019.
If interest grows, Carter said he would like to increase the number of classes and perhaps start an adult class, if he can get at least five interested people. He also wants to start an archery club and find ways to upgrade the equipment the center uses.
“I’d love to see more kids get involved, more parents get involved,” Carter said.
For more information about the archery classes, visit cityofchelsea.com/chelsea-community-center.html.
