My rookie era: The Hunger Games made me think I’d be incredible at archery. So I picked up a bow to find out

I’ve always secretly believed I might be incredible with a bow and arrow.

Not because I have great aim, or good hand-eye coordination or an aptitude for sport, but because I would really, really like for it to be true.

For a while in my early 20s, I watched The Hunger Games every Saturday night. Every time the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen – a skilled archer with a braid who becomes the face of a revolution – drew a bow from her quiver and let it fly, there was part of me that thought: I could do that.

A decade and a half later, I booked a class at Warringah Archers to find out.

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Arriving at a large open field in Sydney’s northern beaches, doubt set in. A series of discouraging memories came to me: finishing 93rd out of 100 in a primary school cross-country race, taking three hours to complete a 20-minute navigation course. The bruises on my legs from run-ins with furniture and regularly missing my mouth when I drink water.

Should I be allowed to pick up a weapon?

There were 14 of us, ranging in age from seven to 60, and two instructors: Ben, who qualified for the Olympics but said it was too expensive to go, and Elizabeth, who told me she was “the mean one” despite seeming perfectly lovely.

Ben measured us for bows, handed us each three arrows, and reminded us not to aim them at anyone we did not wish to kill or maim.

We stood straddling a line in the grass, left shoulder towards a large target, with its familiar concentric circles of black, blue, red and gold, 10 metres away.

Inhaling, I lined up an arrow with trembling hands and pulled back the string, grazing my cheek with my fist, then watched as it sailed past the target into the grass.

Beside me, my boyfriend shot his arrows directly on to the target and our instructor rewarded him with my single greatest motivator in life: praise.

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Now it’s worth mentioning that I have spent the past four years mostly horizontal, recovering from long Covid, and he is obscenely fit and able-bodied. Of the two, there was an obvious frontrunner.

What I lack in physical prowess, however, I make up for in feral determination. I was not about to stand by and let the love of my life be better at archery, so I stomped through the grass, retrieved my arrow, slowed my breathing, and blocked out everything around me. I took my time, took my aim and struck that target again and again. Whoosh, hit, whoosh, hit, every time resisting the urge to do a victory lap of the field – not least because getting struck down by another student while gloating would be an embarrassing way to die.

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The only thing was – ouch – I was retracting my elbow into my left breast with such force it felt bruised. A veteran of the sport wandered by and suggested I be fitted with a shield on that side, which, even though it was mesh and not forged in a medieval fire, looked extremely cool.

Boob safe and spirits high, I moved on to our first challenge: bursting a small balloon taped to the target.

Piercing it on the first go? I have never known a high like it.

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I slipped the ripped balloon skin into my pocket for safekeeping and, honestly, nearly cried.

Next, our instructor attached a small red stress ball to the board. “You have to get this one dead centre to pierce it,” he said.

And I did. Twice.

I have not shut up about it since.

For two hours one Saturday morning in mid-winter, I was incredible with a bow and arrow.

The pierced stress ball is sitting on our mantlepiece at home, propped up on the lip of a small glass jar. Every day I look at it and I think, whatever else may happen in my life, maybe if I want something rabidly enough, I can make it happen.