What started as Carson Chan’s excuse to miss P.E. class has become his potential ticket to the Olympics.
Chan’s rapid ascent to the top of the American youth archery rankings defies the odds and shines a light on Orange County’s little-known, but mighty powerful archery scene.
Chan, 15, of Irvine, was born with flat feet. Running pains him. So, as he prepared for high school, his parents sought a reason to pull him out of P.E. class. For that, he needed to participate in another sport outside of school.
First, he tried swimming. Chan, with his broad-shouldered, muscular build, excelled at it. But, he didn’t take an interest. So, his mom, Winnie Sun, looked up other activities that would exempt Chan from P.E.
In a school district document, she found archery listed as an option for “Independent P.E.” She didn’t think much of it until a whimsical Google search revealed that there happened to be an archery studio in Irvine not too far from their home.
And, that studio happened to be run by Hyang-Soon Seo, the gold medalist in individual archery at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
As the Olympics return to LA, Hyang-Soon hopes to have another taste of gold — this time in her role as coach.
Chan, from out of the blue, has become one of her most promising students, she said.
“Carson is very steady,” Hyang-Soon said. “He consistently scores very high, which is very impressive and very unusual for anyone that’s only been shooting for two years.”
Chan picked up a bow for the first time at the age of 13. Now, the high school sophomore is ranked fifth in USA Archery’s U18 rankings, and he’s already been named to one of USA Archery’s elite training programs.
In 2025, Chan hopes to qualify for the World Archery Youth Championships in Winnipeg. To do that, he said he’ll need to crack the top three Americans at a qualifier in Florida this spring.
“This year is a really crucial one for me,” Chan said.
Chan, and Hyang-Soon, say he’s ready.
“I’ve had other students his age shooting really well, but I’ve never seen anyone with his kind of consistency after two years,” Hyang-Soon said.
Hyang-Soon’s studio, HSS Sports Academy, is tucked into a nondescript office complex north of the 5 Freeway in Irvine.
Inside, it’s bustling with activity. HSS Sports Academy is one of the largest independent archery studios in the country in terms of the number of students involved, Hyang-Soon said.
At the top of every weekday afternoon hour, the lobby fills with a frenzy as children ages 10 and up assemble their bows — some that cost more than $3,000 — as they wait for time with Hyang-Soon on the shooting line.
Next to the lobby is the 20-yard-long indoor range. Its polished wooden floors make it look like an extra-long conference hall, and, indeed, that might have been the room’s original purpose considering the academy’s office complex location. The range is wide enough for a dozen archers to practice simultaneously.
Chan stands all the way to the right of the range. Although he’s not the oldest student at the 3 p.m. Tuesday practice session, he is the strongest.
Weight lifting is part of the archer’s weekly training regimen. His recurve bow has 42 pounds of resistance, and when it’s loaded with an arrow he has to be able to draw it taut to his right shoulder time and time again.
In fact, Chan takes about 2,800 practice shots per week.
“This sport requires a lot of patience, a lot of focus,” Chan said.
On weekdays, Chan shoots indoors for two-to-three-hour sessions while Hyang-Soon stands over his shoulder examining his posture. On Sundays, Chan shoots at a 70-meter outdoor range. He weight trains at least twice per week, and he also trains his mind.
“I do a lot of breathing exercises, a lot of mentality exercises,” he said.
While standing with his bow drawn, Chan stares down his target for seconds at a time before releasing his shot. A lot can go wrong during that time, confidence-wise, Chan said.
“You want to keep your shot cycle as simple as possible,” he said. “You don’t want to overcomplicate the steps. You don’t want to busy your mind. You want to keep it simple and repeatable.”
Simple and repeatable is the ethos of Hyang-Soon’s coaching method.
During practice sessions, she rarely speaks to Chan and only occasionally nods her head to him one way or the other to signal changes he needs to make to his form.
These small gestures are the crux of their coaching relationship. Hyang-Soon, a Korean, speaks a smattering of English. Chan does not speak Korean. Over two years, they have developed their own manner of communicating about archery via these gesticulations.
When Hyang-Soon nods or touches Chan’s shoulder or his elbow one way or the other, Chan knows what micro-adjustments to make.
The changes to his position are so subtle that some are imperceptible to the untrained eye. But the results are undeniable.
One arrow misses the bullseye by an inch. Hyang-Soon lifts Chan’s right elbow a fraction of an inch. His next arrow pierces the bullseye. In competition, that could be the difference between nine points and 10. Qualifying for the U.S. Team at the World Archery Youth Championships. Or not.
“I’ve always been a perfectionist,” Chan said. “I’ve always put full effort into everything I’ve done. I’ve never been a jack of all trades. I’ve always picked a few things and just got good at those. So, when I got into archery, I just decided to put everything into that.”
Chan started archery to avoid P.E. Paradoxically, his commitment to the sport has turned his entire approach to school on its head. Now, Chan takes his coursework online through Irvine Unified’s virtual academy in order to accommodate his rigorous training schedule.
“I just didn’t feel like I could reach my full potential in school or in archery at University High,” Chan said. “Going to Irvine Virtual Academy gives me more time to practice and shoot archery.”
Chan’s mother said that even as a young child, Chan had a rare capacity to focus.
“He could sit and read for hours,” she said.
That discipline has translated to his prowess in archery, a sport built upon countless hours of repetition. Stand. Shoot. Repeat.
Back inside HSS Sports Academy, Chan and a dozen other pupils empty quivers of arrows into small targets 20 yards down the hall. The other students’ arrows spray around the targets. Chan’s precisely cluster around the bullseye.
The students clear the range and do it again. And again. And again. Each time, Chan’s arrows draw a tight circle around the bullseye. Some pierce the bullseye. He seems to never miss the center of the target by more than a couple of centimeters.
As other young archers bore of the sport’s repetitiveness, Chan says his love of archery only continues to grow, fueled by his competitive spirit.
“My second tournament ever, I got third place,” Chan said. “I was like, ‘Wow. This can really be big for me.’ So, that’s what pushed me, and from there I got more excited about archery after that.”
The L.A. Olympics are still more than three years away, but Chan’s goal is crystal clear: to represent Team USA at L.A. 2028.
“I graduate high school in 2027,” he said. “I plan to do well in academics and get into a good college, and then I’m going to take a gap year and spend the whole year fully training for archery, just preparing for those Olympics.”
“That’s the main goal right now,” he added. “Beyond that — well, we’ll see how things go.”
