What makes an Olympian?
It's not just athleticism. A sharp and focused mind is an important tool, especially in the world of archery. As Coach Cindy Gilbert-Bevilacqua from Middletown Archery puts it, “It’s a lot of mind control, blocking the rest of the world out of you.”
Cindy picked up archery at only 5 years of age and began competing when she was 10. She was trained by Olympic coach Hal Henderson during her first year at Arizona State and now has about 40 years of coaching experience,
“You get a lot of exercise with [archery], you get the upper body strength and everything with pulling back the bow because the recurve—it gets harder as you pull back. Same with the bare bow,” says Cindy. “It's a great stress reliever of frustration. It just kind of lets you get rid of the outside world… and the stress or the frustrations.”
“I think archery allows me to be me. It's up to me to put the practice in. It's up to me to determine how far I want to go,” says Cindy. She took a bit of a break from archery in high school. The break only made Cindy realize how much she missed the sport.
One of Cindy’s first students, Dawn Altomonte, also works as a coach. Dawn was a resident athlete at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California.
The two became best friends. “I was in her wedding and godmother to both her children and it just seems like we've always been part of the family together,” says Cindy. She is now my best friend.
Cindy feels that she and Dawn share the same sentiments, “It's a sport that we can't live without.”
Dawn adds, "More than anything, Archery has given me more than I ever thought it could. I have traveled our beautiful country and that of many foreign countries. I have made some of the best lifelong friends. The kind that if you don’t talk daily like I do with Cindy, the friends that we pick up right where we left off. This is what I love most about the sport. Along with coaching and seeing our youth do the same as me, practice, win, lose, pick themselves up and keep going all with the same mindset, and positivity that we are teaching them."
They coach a high school student who uses a wheelchair due to muscle deficiencies. “She used to shoot prior and then took a little leave of absence. I call it ‘going incognito for a while’ but she's back and enjoying it,” says Cindy. “I have seen tremendous dedication and success with her and growing her control of her body and her breathing too.”
Cindy notes that archery takes a lot of stamina and endurance; it’s not as easy as it looks. The school coaches a program called Junior Olympic Archery Development (JOAD) and has taught a multitude of students aspiring to compete. They held a parent archer tournament where students had a month to get their parents in tip-top shape for the competition.
The first purpose was for the parents to realize that it’s not as easy as it looks. “The second part that came out of it that kind of enlightened me was when the archers were trying to coach their parents,” says Cindy. “They're like, ‘They don't listen to me, they don't do this, they don't pay attention, or they don't get it.’ I was like, yeah, welcome to my world sometimes,” she laughs. “But it gave them a different appreciation for what we try to do.”
middletownarchery.com
It has taught me a lot of patience, understanding, dedication, mindset, goal orientation and time management too. I have been able to use these skills throughout my life.
If I can give them some of the same fun and love of the sport like I have then I would say I am doing well as a coach.