No Straight-Arrow : Fun-Loving Archer Shoots for Berth on Olympic Team

SIMI VALLEY — The best shooters in sports have nothing on Justin Huish.

You think those through-the-window, off-the-arena scoreboard, kiss-the-glass, nothing-but-net shots Michael Jordan and Larry Bird make on TV commercials are impressive?

Pure fiction.

What Huish does with a bow and arrow, though on a scale less grand, is for real.

From a greenbelt adjacent to a neighbor’s house, Huish shoots across the street, up the driveway, through the garage, out the back door, across his back yard to a target on a hill.

Nothing but X.

And that’s only a short course, about 50 meters.

This weekend, Huish will be shooting from 70 meters at the United States Archery Olympic trials, which begin Saturday at 9 a.m. at El Dorado Park in Long Beach. No passing cars or pedestrians to worry about, but a challenge just the same.

The top eight from the field of 16 advance to competitions that will determine who is selected for the four-member U.S. men’s team. The top three will compete in Atlanta; the other becomes an alternate.

Huish, 20, is the reigning national men’s target champion, which, in terms of improving his chances of making the Olympic team, means . . . he has a nice title to carry around through the qualification rounds.

“The prestige is nice, but right now it means nothing,” Huish said of the championship he won in August. “It doesn’t get me to the Olympics.”

Only a couple of years out of Simi Valley High, Huish is a relative newcomer among the nation’s elite archers. His father Bernie, a bow hunter, went to a mom-and-pop archery shop near the family’s home in February, 1989, and instead of purchasing excess inventory wound up buying the business.

Eight months later, Justin picked up a bow and arrow for the first time.

Three weeks after that, he won his first tournament.

Huish’s first professional instructor was Lloyd Brown, his current coach at the U.S. Archery Team’s resident-athlete program in San Diego.

“He was a natural,” said Huish’s mother, Ona, who started a Junior Olympic Archery Development program out of the shop.

That was part of the problem.

Archery came so easily that Huish didn’t feel compelled to practice.

“His methods have always driven people crazy,” his father said. “Justin’s the type of kid who can sit around and eat Twinkies, practice for a week, then go out and clean people’s clocks.

“I always thought that the day he homed in, he’d really be something.”

That day came in April when Huish was accepted into the U.S. team’s resident-training program.

“Archery used to be on the back burner,” Huish said. “I knew I could do it, but it wasn’t like now that I’m really dedicated. I forced myself to change because I needed to if I want to get to the Olympics.”

Which is not to say his carefree approach changed entirely.

Among a rather stoic contingent of elite archers, Huish can come off like a loose cannon.

“Everyone’s there, sitting on their chairs, totally serious, and I’m cracking jokes,” Huish said. “I think it bothers them that I can do what I do and still have fun.”

More-experienced archers have failed to rattle Huish, even with their most-blatant attempts at mind games.

“Oh man. They’ll come right up to you and ask, ‘Do you breathe when you’re shooting?’ ” Huish said. “People try to mess with me but I just laugh it off.”

Last month at a preliminary round of the Olympic trials, Huish broke the tension--and startled several nervous opponents--by organizing a pool for the first archer who hit a bull’s-eye.

“I got 40 guys to put in a buck,” Huish said. “People said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ Well, because to me, if you start focusing on hitting the X you forget about scores and everything else and the next thing you know you’re shooting better than ever.”

Huish practices staying “in quiver”--the term he uses for retaining his composure. He works with a sports psychologist, learning to use positive imaging to help his concentration during training. During competition he focuses on thoughts about his form and motion.

Four years ago, Huish participated in Olympic qualifying events that weren’t nearly as nerve-racking.

“I was 16 years old and in a cloud,” he said. “I shot decent scores, but I was just overrun with the whole Olympic deal. Then it was just another tournament because I didn’t think I had any real chance of making it.

“Not like now. Now it’s all I think about. It’s so close I can taste it.”

Huish’s toughest competition for a spot on the team will come from 1988 Olympic gold medalist Jay Barrs, four-time Olympian and ’84 silver medalist Rick McKinney, ’92 Olympian Butch Johnson and five-time national target champion Ed Eliason.

“Before, I’d look at these guys with long rap sheets and think, ‘No way can I beat them,’ ” Huish said. “Winning nationals made it a lot easier for me to walk out on the course confident I can beat anyone.”

Bernie Huish compared Justin’s title-winning performance to a bowler rolling his first 300 game. “Now that he knows he can do it, he’s just elevating himself,” Bernie said.

Huish’s success as an archer comes on the heels of rather futile attempts at more-conventional sports. As a high school freshman, he tried football, basketball, tennis and track.

Ona Huish doesn’t attempt to conceal her amusement with her son’s football career. She can’t even remember what position he played.

Something called left out?

“That was the thing,” she said, laughing. “He didn’t [play]. The whole season he never got in. Finally, the last game, the coach let him play.”

Whether or not he makes the Olympic team, Huish figures to stick with archery while also pursuing other goals. He wants to return to school--he had an archery scholarship to Arizona State before the school canceled its program--and perhaps start a band.

A little more than a year ago, Huish took up guitar. Since then, he has practiced diligently. His hands provide proof: He has several calluses from strumming his guitar, one from archery.

Some things come naturally, others take long hours of practice.

Bernie Huish has watched his son shoot field rounds, at moving targets that simulate a hunter’s prey, with eight different types of arrows, one after the other, hitting bull’s-eye after bull’s-eye.

Someday, Huish said, he might concentrate on bow hunting like his father, who has been known to shoot at targets in his backyard from the roof of his house.

Bernie Huish would like his son to join him--sort of.

“I’m a pretty good shot, but I don’t know,” Bernie said. “I’ve got an inkling he would stomp me into the ground.”