What connects a music studio engineer who worked alongside the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Alicia Keys, A-ha and Bjork with a professional photographer who captured images of civil rights leaders around Brooklyn in the 1970s?
The answer, in fact, has two parts to it. The first link between the two is archery and the second is Columbia University.
Larry Brown and Derek Davis are two renowned and respected archery coaches, and friends since meeting at Proline Archery Lanes in Queens. Larry founded the NYC Youth Archery Program in 2004 after leaving his head coaching position at Columbia University, a position he held for two years. His assistant for the second year at Columbia, and the man who has been in charge of the program since, was Derek.
And while Derek has gone on to oversee 10 national titles in 20 years with the Ivy League institution, Larry has built archery programs within New York’s inner cities. As well as the NYC Youth Archery Program, which involves coaching within New York city schools, Larry founded Center Shot Archers in 2008 as a way of further developing the skills of those who had started in the schools. Derek has coached national and world champions. A Level 5 coach he has also managed the USA team at two World University Games.
“While I was traveling around the country – and we’re talking 22-24 years ago – I noticed there were no African-American children doing archery,” Larry Brown began. “And so, I told myself, ‘I need to make a change’.
“I think I was about 50 years of age at the time and decided to step down from Columbia and go into the public school system and teach archery. Well, everyone thought I was crazy; they thought I’d lost my mind. I was at a prestigious school and here I was stepping out, but I knew I had a bigger picture.”
Growing up in Baisley Park Houses - a set of apartment buildings in South Jamaica, Queens known locally as the ‘Projects’ - archery appeared a million miles away for the young Larry Brown. Kids in his neighborhood were playing basketball, football and baseball.
“I was given a brief introduction to archery by my father,” Larry added. “My father used to work for a bow company in the 50s. He was the laminator, the one putting that pretty shine on the one-piece bows they were shooting back then.
“He had these bows hanging in the house and one day he asked my brothers and myself if we wanted to learn how to shoot. I was only five years old; the other brother was six and one was four.
“We all said yeah, so he took us out to a garbage dump in Queens and pulled out an old cushion and he taught us how to pull the bow back and how to shoot it. That was the only time he ever showed me how to shoot, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Derek’s introduction to the sport came a little later in life, and it would take a little longer still for it to become a passion. He had taken archery as a P.E. class in his freshman year at college, during the fall semester of 1981, but it was only after leaving the music industry that he took it up more seriously.
With a young son, and being newly married, Derek decided that the hours he was working in the studios were not conducive to a healthy family life and so he became a computer technician.
“In the early stages of my new job, my wife said that I would need a hobby to help me relax,” Derek explained. “I’d never had a nine to five. My brother had taken up bowling and was in a bowling league but I didn’t want to copy him.
“I’d considered playing pool, and was decent at it, but that meant being out at the bars late at night, and so I might as well have stayed in the music business if I’m going to do that.
“One day, I came home from work and there was a package on the sofa with a decorative bow on it – it was my birthday. I thought it was a guitar because it was a similar-sized box. I opened it up and it was a bow.”
His wife at the time not only bought him a bow but she also found a nearby archery range, which unbeknown to Derek at the time was only 20 minutes from his home.
It was during his days of competing locally, nationally and internationally that Derek became friends with Larry, setting them on course to then work alongside one another at Columbia University.
Larry – now aged 72 – has gone from being that young boy enjoying a one-off archery lesson from his father, to being that same inspiration to the inner-city kids of Brooklyn.
“In those early days, I don’t know why I never got arrested,” said Larry with a laugh. “I was running around the Projects shooting a bow and arrow. I was shooting at everything, at the trees, into the grass. I didn’t know anything about this sport other than I loved what I was doing.”
Among those to fall under the watchful gaze of Larry Brown is Dallas Jones. His first look at archery was in the basement of a Brooklyn school. He became national champion in 2017 and went on to be named to USA Archery’s Regional Dream Team and the Resident Athlete program.
Derek, 61, found himself tentatively stepping into the world of coaching as a part-time assistant in his late 30s, and within 12 months he was leading one of the most talented archery programs in the country. In his first year, he helped them to their first national title, ending a period of Texas A&M dominance.
It is more than 20 years since Derek and Larry worked together at Columbia University. In that time, hundreds of youngsters and young adults have benefited from their coaching and their guidance.
And while neither Larry Brown nor Derek Davis view themselves as role models, they are. By the same token, they are breaking down barriers. With the work that Larry does, he is reinventing the norms, while opening doors to new experiences and opportunities to those in under-served communities. Both are helping shape the next generation.
“When I left Columbia, I was very clear,” commented Larry. “I wanted more kids from the inner-city schools to have archery as a visible item in their world. Now I have first graders who are clearly aware of archery.
“I come in and they’re like ‘are you the archery man, you the archery coach, when can I do archery?’
"Am I creating in-roads? I feel that I am but it’s about getting the next kid and giving them a clear path of choice and opportunity.”
Almost every child to have gone through Larry’s program has gone on to college. One young lady sprang to mind as Larry reflected on what makes it all worthwhile.
“Danielle Martinez not only went to college, but she also got her Masters degree in two English subjects. From a kid who never walked off the block, she graduated from college and was then in Bangkok teaching English.
“And then years later I get a phone call telling me she was getting married. She then called me back and said, ‘Coach, I was a little nervous to ask you, but would you walk me down the aisle? I was butter after that, but you could’ve sop me up with a biscuit.
“The magnitude of the effect that I’d had on her life, from the Saturday morning program, didn’t hit me until the day of her wedding, when she wrapped her arm in mine, and we walked down the aisle. Those are my rewards. Watching these kids develop in life and become what they want to become.”
Prior to coaching, Derek worked with jazz greats such as Gil Evans and Masabumi Kikuchi, who in turn had collaborated with arguably the most influential figure in the history of that particular music genre, Miles Davis. Derek was personally asked by Evans to be his sound man for his orchestra at Sweet Basil Jazz Club in Greenwich Village.
Another major project that Derek was involved with was mixing the sixth album for Norwegian group, A-ha, whose biggest hit in the USA was the 1985 song Take on Me.
The music engineer turned computer technician, who spent the first half of his career working with technology that when set to behave in a certain manner, more often than not, did just that. To then switch to working with young adults in a competitive environment, dealing with human reaction, was certainly a shift in gears.
“With coaching, there’s human feedback,” said Derek. “It gives you a sense of validation of a good day's work in a way that you don’t get from fixing a computer, switching it on and seeing it spring into operation.
“Just watching young people who are still developing and trying to get to certain goals, and just working with them and being a part of that process… for me, the thing that matters more than the championships is the five, 10 years down the line when you get that phone call or that email just saying ‘thank you’.
“And it’s often not just for the archery part but how they’ve applied those lessons to adult life. Everyone who has a baby, I send them a stuffed lion (Columbia University’s mascot). I’ve gone to the weddings, (and) to the Christenings.”
Larry Brown was raised in the Projects. Derek Davis, in his own words, “grew up really poor”, and yet through archery they have given so much back to the archery community, the black community, the collegiate community and beyond.
“For me, it’s like life’s blood,” Larry explained. “If you don’t give back, how do you expect your children to go forward?”
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