ISLE PROFILE • ARCHER PHYLLIS SHIPMAN
She's taking a bow at 58
By Catherine E. Toth
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| Phyllis Shipman, 58, rediscovered archery six years ago and is nationally ranked. She will compete at the the World Archery Championships in September.
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For about a hundred bucks, she bought a simple wooden barebow, the kind kids shoot arrows from at summer camp. Nothing spectacular, just something to get her back into the sport she enjoyed back in college.
Shipman had no idea that that purchase six years ago would have taken her this far: The 58-year-old is ranked 10th in the nation in Olympic-style archery. She won the U.S. Field Archery Championships in June and finished second in the World Team Trials.
She doesn't even compete in her age division anymore because she is too good: She holds six national records in the master's division.
"It's incredible," said M.J. Rogers, director of the archery program at the ARCO Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif., where Shipman trains. "For a person of her age, it's not the norm. She's progressed exceedingly well ... It certainly is amazing."
Shipman, a retired principal at Mililani Uka Elementary, will represent the United States in September at the the XVII World Archery Championships in Canberra, Australia.
All this, and all she wanted to do was find something to do in her retirement.
"I started again on a whim," said Shipman, taking a break from shooting at Kapi'olani Park one afternoon. "I forgot how much I really enjoyed it ... Now I'm an athlete. I retired and became an athlete."
The first time Shipman picked up a bow was nearly 50 years ago at Teela-Wooket Camp in Vermont. And the only reason she took up the sport at the University of Pennsylvania was to avoid taking physical education classes. But she was good at it; made the varsity team and was selected for the All-American team in 1964 and 1965.
She packed away her bow and worked with the Peace Corps, which brought her to Hawai'i in 1965. Shipman discovered a passion for teaching while working with the corps on the Big Island. Instead of traveling abroad, she taught and furthered her studies in Hawai'i to land administrative jobs at various schools.
After she retired, she wanted to do something that would keep her busy and outdoors. She doesn't surf — despite living directly across the street from Sunset Beach — or paddle as her husband and son do. Instead, she starting shooting a barebow (a recurve bow without a sight) at Kapi'olani Park.
At first she competed for fun. But her relentless pursuit to improve led her to archery clinics on the Mainland, where she honed her skills, and led her to national competitions.
"What makes her so good is she practices a lot," said Lloyd Brown, the U.S. national team coach, who has been working with Shipman for three years. "She has a really good attitude, a good competitive attitude, which is very important."
When Brown first saw Shipman shoot at a clinic three years ago, "she was just like any other beginner," he said. "I didn't see anything real special then. That came later."
Soon, Shipman was beating shooters her age — then beating competitors decades younger.
"We have a lot of archers that are her age, but none that shoots as well as she does," Brown said. "Actually, for somebody to start at a later age and then be able to excel, and to be able to shoot competitively with the top women in the United States, that's what sets her apart."
With experience in Olympic-style archery, where archers shoot from a designated distance toward a target, Shipman felt confident in her skills, and improvement came quickly.
But field archery, in which she will compete in September, is more challenging and physically demanding. Archers have to trek across varying terrain, usually in woods or on mountainsides, shooting at targets of different distances, some marked, some unmarked. Completing the course can take up to six hours.
Shipman had no idea what she was getting into when she competed in her first field archery event. She was so unprepared, she competed in tennis shoes instead of hiking boots.
"I thought I was going to come home without having taken a single shot," Shipman said. "It was that demanding."
She laughs when she thinks about how far she's progressed in such a short amount of time, competing against archers young enough to be her children.
"Everyone thinks as you grow older, somehow you've become less likely to enjoy life the way you did when you were younger," she said. "Like you can't do new things or take on new challenges. That's just not the case. It's simply not true."
NOTE: Shipman is trying to raise money to travel to Australia. Tax-deductible donations can be made on her behalf to the National Archery Association, One Olympic Plaza, Colorado Springs, CO 80909.
