New York OAS Growing

Olympic Archery has been growing in New York City schools thanks to the hard work and passion of Natasha Green and Larry Brown. They have helped many schools start archery programs through our ESDF grants and we are now excited to be including them in OAS so that we can continue to grow the region and include more events and competitions.

Natasha is the founder of Hidden Gems, a non-profit organization that “organizes educational and athletic projects for youth and adults.” When asked how she got into spreading archery, Natasha says, “I ended up promoting Olympic Archery to schools because one day I wanted to bring something unique to the students in NYC public schools besides basketball, football or track & field. I started looking around for something interesting to bring students and I came upon archery. Archery will be a sport that allows students to compete with one another no matter what school they go to be it public, charter, private or catholic and will allow families and friends to bond over a simple but complex sport such as archery.”

“Historically, I think archery was a sport in some of the bigger schools 50 years ago but the sport dwindled into nonexistence eventually,” explains Natasha. “I believe one of the contributing factors is that there were not enough teachers of the sport and enough participants to keep the sport thriving. Hopefully, with a strong foundation we can implement mini programs in numerous schools that will eventually grow in size to build exemplary archers.”

This need for archery teachers is being met by Coach Larry Brown who is training both archers and archery coaches.

“NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — There’s a man on a mission in the Bronx. He’s using archery to get kids on the right track in life.

CBS 2’s Cindy Hsu went to a school in the Bronx on Wednesday, where the students were right on target.

Thanks to the blockbuster films “The Avengers”and “The Hunger Games” archery is red hot, but for Larry Brown it’s been his passion since he was 5, when his dad first taught him to shoot in Queens…”

READ MORE

Through archery, Coach Brown is able to touch hundreds of lives. “The impact [of archery] has been GREAT kid and adults love it. This weekend we are having our 8th annual community archery tournament. We will have 80 archers competing at one time. The archers will range from 3rd grade to adults.”

We are excited to see archery continue to grow in the New York area. The schools have great support and there are also opportunities for them with the Columbia University team. We look forward to the coming school year and what it has in store for NY OAS.