'Hunger Games' archery inspires young Texans

Eleven-year-old Phaedra Goodwin closed her right eye, pulled the bowstring taut and let fly a bright purple arrow.
Ten yards away at West Houston Archery's indoor practice range, her arrow pierced the round target.
Inspired by Katniss, the archer heroine of "The Hunger Games" trilogy and this spring's hit movie, the Cypress sixth-grader was on her fifth lesson.
A fan of the movie's battle scenes, Phaedra already has learned what she believes to be the most important skill: "Patience. You have to see where the arrow is going to hit before you release."
In "The Hunger Games," selected boys and girls ages 12 to 18 are forced to fight to the death in a futuristic world. Katniss' weapon of choice is a bow and arrow. The age-old weapon is also the choice of Scottish Princess Merida, the animated star of Disney Pixar's "Brave," which opened Friday. Empowered by her bow and arrows, Merida insists on bucking tradition and blazing her own trail in life.
"We've seen a lot of new faces come out of this," Kevin Whiteford of Viking Archery Inc. said about "The Hunger Games." The pro shop and range owned by his parents in Southwest Houston has seen a 30 percent increase in business since mid-March, when the movie opened.
" 'Lord of the Rings' was very good for three years straight, and now we've got 'The Hobbit' coming out at the end of the year; it's going to feature more archery as well," said Whiteford, an archer for 44 years.
Other current pop-culture archers include Hawkeye from "The Avengers," the 128 archers competing in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, comic-book hero Green Arrow ("Arrow" debuts this fall on the CW) and, most recently, the contestants on ABC's "Bachelorette," who took part in an afternoon of archery, log tossing and other Scottish pastimes after viewing "Brave."
Whiteford said the variety of in-the-spotlight archers - from princesses to heroes to Olympians - is "going to bring a good range of different ages into the sport."
And archery is a sport that virtually anyone can do, said West Houston Archery manager Glenn Scott.
"You don't have to be a sculpted athlete to do this," said Scott, who noted that sales were up at his store. "You don't have to be in the best shape. You don't have to be the tallest, the fastest to do archery. It's a little easier for people to get into."
Others seeing interest spike are Primitive Archer, an international magazine based in Houston, and the U.S. Olympic archery team. The magazine, which teaches its readers how to build their own bows, experienced a 55 percent increase in magazine sales in one month.
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