On Thursday, May 19 through Sunday, May 22, the MSU Archery Team hosted the 2016 U.S. National Outdoor Collegiate Championship, where archers from across the nation competed at the Hope Sports Complex in Lansing. One of those athletes is MSU biochemistry and molecular biology sophomore Carolyn Graham.
Graham, 19, decided to get involved with the MSU archery team at the beginning of her freshman year.
“I’ve always enjoyed it, I really appreciate picking it back up in college,” Graham said. “I grew up around the MSU archery team. I think I have always been interested in it.”
Carolyn’s father, Dr. Norman Graham, is the director of the Center for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at MSU. Dr. Graham was the MSU archery team coach when he first started teaching at MSU in 1987 and has been practicing archery since the age of 12.
“Archery has been important to me for a long time, and it wasn’t always clear that my daughters would want to do it as well,” Dr. Graham said about Carolyn pursuing archery in college. “We traveled around when she was quite young, and we would take the archery team to various tournaments, and they would come along.”
Not only does archery run in the Graham’s family blood, but Dr. Graham also makes all of Carolyn’s arrows.
“It’s more like assembling, you have to do various adjustments to make sure the arrows match effectively with the bow,” Dr. Graham said.
Dr. Graham attends all of Carolyn’s events and drives her to every archery practice.
“I think he’s thrilled that I am doing archery because he loves it so much,” Carolyn said.
In preparation for the championship, Carolyn increased the poundage of her bow to 36 pounds. Increasing bow poundage is a helpful technique for Carolyn because recurve archers at the tournament, the event Carolyn participated in, shot at 70 meters.
“This is my first major outdoor collegiate competition,” Carolyn said, “In a lot of ways I’m using this as a testing time to see where I am and where I need to be when it comes to my skill level. It’s also a lot of fun; I love hanging out with my teammates. Us recurve shooters have to stick together ‘cause there is only three of us and I’m the only girl. It’s a fun time to make connections and improve my skills.”
Carolyn’s teammates are also very supportive and enjoy archery as much as her family. Fisheries and wildlife junior Hunter Jackson is one of Carolyn’s teammates, and has been shooting archery for 12 years. Jackson has also been on the USA Archery Team for five years and the MSU Archery Team for three years, shooting recurve and compound bows.
“I just met Carolyn this year when she came to Michigan State, it’s been really cool getting to know her,” Jackson said. “I’ve kind of known her through her dad pretty much my whole life, since I was seven.”
Although Carolyn didn’t win a medal in this year’s championship, the following Spartans went home with medals around their necks: Emily Bee won gold in female compound, Lucas Jarrett won silver in male bowhunter and Katie Glover won silver in female bowhunter.
