Many students play sports like soccer, baseball, football, or volleyball. But some students go in a completely different direction. Sixth-grader Alexandria L., for example, doesn’t play a “regular” sport.

Alexandria participates in Korean archery, which is a type of archery that uses a Korean bow known as a Gakgung.

“In Korean archery, we basically learn the old methods of Koreans when they used archery in war,” Alexandria said. “We have different types of bows; they’re much shorter, and they can go farther distances than Japanese bows.”

She has been doing this for about a year and loves how unique her sport is in comparison to the common sports that other students typically play. Alexandria practices at her martial arts studio, where they rehearse defending themselves using taekwondo as well as Korean archery.

“What I love about this sport is that it’s just so different from regular archery. It’s more focused on arm strength, and we work on our breathing. It’s not just about hitting the target. Taekwondo and Korean archery are similar because you learn fight routines in both sports, as well as learning to defend yourself.”

Unlike regular archery, Korean archery has many different activities incorporated within the sport. 

“We participate in horse-back riding, as well as things such as fight-shooting, where we include many of the skills we have. I haven’t tried horse-back riding, but I really want to try it and hopefully get better at it.”

Athletes have many different motivations. “My biggest inspiration would probably be my teachers at my studio,” she said.

Korean archery, unlike soccer and football, is an uncommon sport, one of which few people have heard.

“It’s really small in America, and we’re trying to branch out and show people that it is a sport. Not a lot of people know about it, which makes it really cool.”