Today we’d like to introduce you to Racae Meyer.
Hi Racae, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was standing on an archery field in junior high school on an Air Force Base in Southern California in 1963 when they announced President Kennedy had been shot. At the time, I never would have imagined that archery would become so important in my life many years later, and a completely different career! As many parents do, one summer I was looking around for a sport for my 12-year-old son, Alex, and we stumbled upon an archery booth at a street fair in Queens, NYC, where we lived. He became obsessed with archery, and I supported his love of the sport by driving him to the archery range once or twice a week to practice for the first couple of years. In 1994, we decided to move to Austin because it was a young and up-and-coming city, the weather meant my son could practice all year round, and it was where my mother´s side of the family had lived for several generations. I drove Alex up to the local indoor archery range every other day after school, and I found an outdoor field for him to practice shooting longer distances on the in-between days. After a few months, he was asked to coach an intro class at the indoor range, and I decided to help out coaching first-time archers. Only a few people had ever seen an Olympic recurve bow. Most archers were compound bowhunters. It was an interesting time!
After another couple of years, he won the U.S National Target championship in his recurve division a couple of times, and after deciding to take up archery as well, I came in 2nd in Texas in the women´s recurve division. We coached together for several years, resulting in several of our archers becoming national junior champions, many state champions, and one amazing Paralympian who won the bronze medal in Beijing!
We continued shooting and coaching JOAD (Junior Olympic Archery Development) at the indoor range when, after about 13 years, the new owners told us to leave because they had other ideas for the range. We very luckily found an indoor archery range inside a karate studio in southwest Austin. In March 2009, we formed Archery Training Center, Inc. (ATCI), and during Christmas 2009, we renovated the indoor space. Everyone said we wouldn´t survive if we only trained people in Olympic target archery on recurve bows, but that´s all we wanted to do, so we just went for it – and we grew over 1000% in less than three years!
In the following years, we both trained to become more knowledgeable and higher-level coaches, with Alex as a USA Archery Level 4 NTS Coach coaching junior archers out at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, CA, and traveling with the US junior team as a coach to international competitions. In 2010, I became a USA Archery Level 3 NTS Coach. My main focus was on developing both adult and junior archers from their first day to competitive level when Alex would take them on to national and international levels.
In June 2019, Alex moved to Ireland to be the coach of the Irish Junior National Team, and I became a USA Archery Level 4 NTS Coach. I immediately started strengthening the competitive archery program at Archery Training Center, with a view to finding and training the next US national champions and potential Olympians on our two 70-m archery fields, certifying USA Archery Level 2 instructors and Level 3 coaches, and coaching international archers in archery form and mental management. The training programs are working great due to 27 years of experience of passionately training over 7000 archers and strong support from the Austin community, resulting in ATCI (and Olympic target archery) increasingly becoming more popular than ever.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It´s always a smooth road if you take challenges as opportunities. The first challenge was 27 years ago: Gaining enough knowledge to be able to answer experienced archers´ questions. This was a huge opportunity to learn everything I could from other more experienced coaches and archers about Olympic target archery. Acquiring knowledge of the sport is something I pursue almost daily, even now.
Finding the time and money to create a training environment worthy of world-class archers is a continuing challenge but an exciting one. The community is more behind our efforts than ever before. I couldn´t do it without my loyal group of dedicated and passionate archers and coaches, who all share my vision of giving people dreams of what they could do and become and then guiding them to actually achieve those dreams.
When people show up for their first day at archery, they expect to have fun playing at shooting arrows, and, while that is always the motivation, they quickly are introduced to all the wonderful life skills that archery teaches: patience, perseverance, resilience, focus, determination, positivity, mental and physical strength, emotional stability, etc. That is what people find so surprising and amazing about archery: They then starting asking: How good can I be when nearly everything is within my control? They learn that the results are what they deserve for their effort, focus, and attitude and that they are capable of succeeding.
Some other challenges were when we lost the use of the first indoor range, but our archers rallied, and we found a new range where we built an even better future for the next 13 years.
We lost that indoor range in June 2021 because they sold the building, but that served to shift my focus towards developing our outdoor range training programs.
COVID forced us to close for many months in 2020/2021 before vaccines to protect archers, but I took that opportunity to attend online coaching seminars and create virtual coaching certification courses to train others locally and nationwide.
We opened again in June 2021 to even more registrations.
I expect 2022 to be the best year ever!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am Head Coach and owner of Archery Training Center, Inc. (ATCI). I create and develop the specialized training programs, coaching requirements and responsibilities, and safe environments needed to train archers from having no archery experience to becoming competitive national and international archers.
I set the goals, tone, principles, values, and direction of ATCI, which include creating a professional, knowledgeable, focused, encouraging and inspiring training and practicing environment for Junior Olympic and adult recurve target archers.
I also handle the administration and financial obligations of ATCI.
What I am most proud of is how we help and encourage people to develop self-confidence and courage, together with the mental, physical, and emotional strengths needed for them to be successful, not just in archery but in life.
What sets us apart from others is our 27 years of dedication, passion, professionalism and coaching experience and successful training of competitive archers. Our archers and their families come first. They know they can trust our knowledge, judgment and advice. People rely on our integrity, values, guidance and how much we care.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
I would advise first to read a lot on subjects relating to your goal. Through that, you will find the experts in your field, people who have done what you want to do. Seek out anyone with more knowledge and experience than you have, and learn everything you can from them. Attend seminars on what you are interested in doing. Find other people who share your interest and meet and learn together. One thing I´ve realized from coaching is that coaches or mentors are vital for success. Everyone gets lazy, not putting in the necessary time, effort, focus and resources needed to be highly successful. A coach is often there just to keep you moving forward, giving your nudges, believing in you when your faith in yourself wanes, guiding you on to the next level. Having a coach who challenges you but in a way that works with your personality, encourages you, and reminds you of your big sky goals, how far you´ve come, what the next step is – and does this frequently – is vital. Often people learn something and then never check in with their mentor or coach again. It´s extremely important to keep this relationship going through frequent even short sessions over a long time in order for you to be successful.
I personally like to specialize rather than be a generalist. Being the best you can be in one area eventually makes you an expert; doing many things is very interesting but doesn´t, in my opinion, lead to great success. However, pursue what makes you happy, what you are really interested in because you will work smarter and harder at it and be motivated for longer, which will lead to more success.
Pricing:
- $35 Outdoor 1: First-time Intro Class (2 hrs.)
- $30 Outdoor 2-9 from 9m-70m (1.5 hrs.)
- $30 Virtual NTS Form Sessions (30 min.)
- $1200-$2300 5-Day Intensive Form and Mental Clinic (3-5 hrs./day)
- $300 5-Day Spring and Summer Adult and Junior Training Camps (3 hrs/day)
Contact Info:
- Email: archerytrainingcenteraustin@gmail.com
- Website: https://www.archerytrainingcenter.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archerytrainingcenter/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archerytrainingcenter
