Aarya

What do they love most about playing their sport(s)?

Archery is one arrow at a time—just Aarya, the bow, and the next shot. He loves that it's honest: the score tells you where your work is. But what he loves most is the line itself. He has shot in Korea, India, Taiwan, France, Argentina, Colombia, and Dakar, Senegal, his first time on the African continent. He's quiet and funny and makes friends anywhere, at any age, in languages he doesn't speak. Someone always asks him for help—practice ranges, warm-ups, odd-hour calls—and he gives it.

Who inspires them—on or off the field—and why?

The Para archers he shoots alongside. Archery demands stillness and mental strength on every single arrow, and they come to it with physical limits most people would treat as a reason to quit. Aarya draws his own strength from them. It's pushed him into early-stage research on making equipment better and cheaper, and toward Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, the field he wants to enter—helping people get back the things their bodies stopped letting them do.

What’s one moment in their athletic journey that makes you proudest?

This fall he represents the United States at the Youth Olympic Games in Dakar—the first Olympic Games of any kind held on the African continent. He earned it at trials with a world record, after two years aimed at nothing else. There is no second attempt: the age window opens once and closes. He barely mentions it. That's the part I'm proudest of—a quiet 16-year-old standing inside something that has never happened before, and treating it as a privilege rather than a prize.