Recently, neuroscience senior Erin Formiller and human biology senior Katie Glover took up their bows and arrows and shot together for one of the last times of this semester.
It was a local winter league tournament hosted at MSU’s Demmer Center, and Formiller and Glover walked away receiving first and second place, respectively. Nationally, the duo ranked third and sixth in the 47th U.S. National Indoor Championships.
Formiller serves as the director of communications for the archery team at MSU, while Glover is its secretary. They both hold integral places on the team’s editorial board.
But what one might not know is that the duo, equally matched in archery skill level and studying very similar things at MSU, are also the best of friends and roommates.
“I wanted to join the archery team because I found it on Facebook my sophomore year,” Glover said. “And when I expressed interest, Erin just reached out to me and told me that the Demmer Center was far away and that there’s no buses that go out to it, so she offered to drive me one day, and after that, every time we wanted to go shoot, we were there. We just clicked.”
Formiller continued driving Glover and a few other members of the team to practice every week, and through it the two bonded.
“Coming into MSU, I felt kind of out there,” Formiller said. “I felt like I didn’t really have that connection with other girls here because no other girls I knew here hunted or shot bow and arrow, so when I met her, it was great.”
Before joining the team, both women had never shot competitively before.
Formiller said she tried it out one day, and after gaining some success, she told Glover to try it out as well.
Since then, the two have been hooked — they’ve learned together, and because of that, bounce lessons off one another whenever they shoot.
“We just push each other,” Glover said. “We started in around the same area, at the same time, and it’s like, if she shoots a really high score I want to shoot a really high score too.”
The two admit there is a competitive nature to their friendship, but they usually don’t let that get in the way of things — at the end of the day, they’re still best friends.
“I mean, when we’re competing together we are definitely competitors,” Formiller said. “But with as much as I want to win, I want her to win as well.”
Glover said when it comes to competition, the pair puts their friendship aside.
“But I mean, she always wins,” Glover said. “At least I’m the taller one.”
After meeting and growing as friends and as archers through their sophomore year, the two never lost touch and decided during their junior years to get an apartment together.
“We both started having some roommate issues last year and at one point we were just like ‘why are we not rooming together?’” Glover said. “We were practically living together already, just not paying rent at the same place.”
Now, they have an entire wall inside their apartment covered in both of their leftover targets from all of their competitions and practices.
Formiller said there’s probably more than 40 between the two of them. Two of the targets look very similar.
“At leagues on Wednesday, Katie and I, of course, got bracketed together for a one-to-one shoot off,” Formiller said. “We shot the same exact score which came down to a one-arrow shoot off, and I beat her by maybe two centimeters.”
The two will go on to compete in USCA Collegiate Regionals in a few weeks and will later go on to finish out the season at USCA Collegiate Nationals in May.
After graduation, they are headed down different paths — Formiller will move to her job in north Chicago and Glover will start working at a hospital close to her hometown in Michigan.
Nonetheless, the two intend to keep in touch through archery.
“I think we’ll be seeing each other at meets around the country even once we move away from each other,” Formiller said. “We plan to, actually. I don’t think either one of us is giving up shooting anytime soon.”
