Ricci Cheah Urges Para Archers to Live Like Martial Artists

WHEN National Para archery coach Ricci Cheah says his New South Wales Institute of Sport (NSWIS) scholarship holders need to ‘live’ their sport like a martial artist, he doesn’t expect them to break bricks with their bare hands – instead, he’s imploring them to embrace their iron-willed discipline.

Cheah has made it clear he holds high expectations for each of his athletes and he’s long maintained archers must work just as hard on developing their mental strength as they do finetuning their skills.

“My expectations are they always train the best they can, and that each session is purposeful,” said Cheah as his wheelchair-bound athletes worked up a sweat in the NSWIS gymnasium.

“I also want them to give it their best every single time. If their performances are matching what’s needed in international competition – and they’re performing to the best of their ability – then that’s what I expect.”

He said adopting the approach of a martial artist, where practitioners do such things as adapt and evolve to change; always give 110 percent; enjoy the journey without rushing to the destination; turn weaknesses into strengths and appreciate courage can’t exist without fear – would prepare archers for any possible challenge on the range.

“We have to treat archery almost like a martial art, where it applies to everything and not just archery,” he said. “I stress at every single session the importance of knowing the process and knowing yourself.

“That might mean knowing how you react emotionally to different situations, even things outside of archery and training. It could also include doing a certain workout whether it’s shooting [arrows] when they might not really want to.

“In that instance the act of not wanting to do it, but doing it anyway, takes commitment.  That is mental training.”

Cheah conceded it took an enormous amount of honesty, trust, and vulnerability, for anyone to galvanise their mind.

“It’s quite a hard thing to admit that you have certain problems – mental problems – in training,” he said. “Ego comes into it as well because you need to be humble and admit ‘okay, when I shoot a really good score that freaks me out a little bit’.

“It’s tough to admit that, but when I’m working one-on-one with each athlete, they have to be absolutely honest with me about competition; shot process . . . everything.”

Cheah, who won a junior world championships gold medal, became an ‘accidental’ coach when people asked him to give them lessons. He was working at the time as a physiotherapist, but he found dealing with a stream of worker’s compensation injuries for knees and backs didn’t provide the same sense of purpose he attained from helping people improve as archers.

After becoming the head coach for Sydney Olympic Park Archers in 2009, Cheah’s expertise was rewarded by being named Head coach of the Australian Paralympic teams that competed in Rio and Tokyo.

The NSWIS-based coach said while he was excited by the growth in Para Archery across the nation, he said it brought with it some problems.

“As national coach seeing Para archery grow across Australia is great to see,” he said. “There are some growing pains . . . the program is growing faster than how we can support it . . . but that’s a good problem to have.”

While other state sporting institutions are now working harder on their Para archery, Cheah said the time NSWIS had already invested in it, the structure and programs, allied with the access NSWIS scholarship holders, including Ameera Lee, Jonathon Milne, Peter Marchant, Garry Robinson (pictured above with Cheah), Imalia Oktininda and Mark Steiner have to NSWIS’s facilities made it the benchmark in Australia.

“The support they get from NSWIS, everything is exemplary,” he said. “The other states are starting to get behind the sport, but NSWIS is the leader. It helps that they have a training environment that is close to the gym and that everything is centralised.”

As NSWIS prepares to celebrate Harmony Week from March 20-27, Cheah acknowledged how archery, and the people who he met through the sport, enriched his life not long after he and his family migrated to Australia in 1998.

“We came here when I was eight, and I started archery when I was 10 and it helped me make friends,” he said.

“I’m an introvert and tend to hang out with people who are older than me. For whatever reason, I tend not to click with people who are my own age. So, as a junior I was shooting with people who were older and I’m still friends with them now.

“Archery was my home away from home. I always wanted to become a sports person. I tried a whole lot of different sports – you name it, I tried it. I had the mindset that I’d stick with a sport I was good at.

“While I was never good at any sport, I liked archery. I liked the fact I didn’t need to do anything to do something – you stand in one place to shoot an arrow.  I liked it, but it took me a long time to realise if you like something you do it over and over again, you end up getting better at it.

“It took me a long time to appreciate you need to put in hours to do a sport.”

Daniel Lane, NSWIS