Sophomore aims high, and hits bullseye
Despite Diamond Bar High School’s lack of a team, Jorrin Song has gone out of his way to pursue the sport independently.
October 15, 2015
Despite having only five years of experience in archery, Diamond Bar High School sophomore Jorrin Song has already attracted the attention of the national Olympic archery coach and tried out for the 2016 Olympic team.
After having a childhood fascination with archery, Song signed up in 2010 for Seo Hyan Soon, an archery club located at El Dorado Park in Long Beach. He improved quickly and began shooting independently at the Roadrunner Archery Club, which is located at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista.
While training at the center, Song was noticed by Jacob Wukie, a silver medalist of the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Wukie offered to coach Song and taught him the National Training System shooting method created by Kisik Lee, the National Head Coach of the United States Olympic Archery Training Program.
“His coaching worked with my body type. A problem with some of the [other] coaches is that they will force you to do things your body isn’t used to so that messed up my shooting for a while,” Song said.
However, the pair stopped meeting after Wukie left to pursue his own path in archery. Song then switched to training at El Dorado Park again, where his talent caught Lee’s eye. Lee commented on how Song’s body type was more suited for NTS and offered Song a spot at his archery academy, Joy Lee.
In addition to the Joy Lee academy, Song is also a part of the Recurve Junior Dream Team, also coached by Lee and a few other instructors. Consisting of “the most promising junior and cadet Olympic style archers in the country,” according to sports website teamusa, the team travels to the Olympic Training Center occasionally for a thorough, week long training camp. Outside of the camps, the coaches and members work together via the internet to train.
“When you see him compete, even in a national level competition next to Olympians and professional archers, he remains calm and focused. This is not easy as it is easy to doubt yourself or to let your emotions get out of hand. With his passion for archery and continued hard work, Jorrin is well positioned to continue his success in the sport,” Keaton Chia, a coach from his Recurve Dream Team, said via Facebook.
Song, who regularly competes in tournaments ranging from the state-level to the international-level, also competed in the Olympic trials held at the beginning of September in Texas.
After competing with other Olympic-hopeful archers, Song did not make the Top 16 cut. An injury had forced Song to take the week before the trials off, which greatly reduced his chances.
However, with the scores Song achieved prior to the injury, he would have made the cut into the next round of the trials. The athlete isn’t giving up his dream though, as he plans on competing in the next trials held in 2019.
In fact, the injury helped change Song for the better as the he learned to just enjoy the journey as well as the experiences that come with participating in a tournament.
“My injury changed my mindset of thinking that I actually made it to the Olympic trials, not in the mindset before of thinking I can actually win. But after the injury I got, I have a mindset of thinking it’s just for experience, which [has] helped me because I would have times where I would shoot really well before a tournament but after I get into the tournament, and I would try too hard [on winning] which messes with my mental state and shooting,” Song said.
