While many Columbia and Barnard students head to quiet spaces to focus, award-winning archery head coach Derek Davis has a different idea: playing music in the background.

"It lessens the distraction from other schoolwork and things like that," archery head coach Derek Davis said. "If it's too quiet, it's almost as bad as being too noisy because it gives the brain time for other thoughts to seep in."

Now, enter LeFrak Gymnasium on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday afternoon and you'll see around 10 women, bows and arrows in hand, focused intently on some small targets at the other end of the gym, with loud music playing.

Davis spent a year as the Lions' assistant coach before becoming head coach in 2004. In his first year, the Light Blue archery team won the national championship in the recurve division. Since then, it has won every Eastern Regional title and three more national titles, most recently in 2011 and 2013, all in the recurve division. Last week, Davis was announced as the winner of one of four Coach of the Year awards handed out by the USA Olympic Committee.

While Davis says he does a good bit of traditional coaching—such as on-the-spot strategizing, and motivating and calming down a team in the face of adversity—he was given the award for his nontraditional coaching tactics.

The Doc Counsilman Science Award is given to a coach who best uses scientific methods as part of the coaching process. Davis, who only started archery as a hobby to relax after work, focuses on archers' form.

"At the foundation, it means having a knowledge of biomechanics," Davis, who spent 10 years studying the subject, said. "Once you have that understanding, and understand what the optimal process for shooting a bow is, then I use a lot of video analysis software ... to analyze and compare, to make sure the archers are being as competitive as possible with their technique."

His equipment includes a high-quality 240-frames-per-second camera for use indoors, and a 1,000-frames-per-second camera for outdoors, used to study the archers' form. He also uses an extension pole to place the cameras in areas too dangerous for him to stand—like near the target.

"I can slow it down, I can do side-by-side, I can superimpose two shots over top of each other to see if they're in sync," Davis said. He added that he uses his iPad and iPhone in this process as well. "I can get a video, scrub it, slow it down a little bit, see things right away."

The system extends beyond Columbia archery. Davis is also a coach for the Junior Dream Team—a program organized by USA Archery that trains potential Olympic-caliber archers—and even coaches various national teams. This year, Davis was selected to coach the national team going to the Pan American Olympic Festival in July.

"When you talk about the top athletes, there's not going to be a whole lot of coaching going on," Davis said. "You really just stay out of their way and let them do their thing."

He said he normally doesn't see team members until the day they leave for the tournament, so he has to film and study the archers' technique on any available practice days. That way, if they accidentally deviate from their usual form, he can point it out and help them make adjustments.

"Mainly you're there to support them mentally, emotionally, make sure they have everything they need, make sure they're where they're supposed to be," he said.

That's exactly what he did last spring with Columbia's own team. Heading into the gold medal match, junior Sarah Bernstein said that Davis calmed the team down.

"Coach took us into a huddle and told us he believed in us," she said. "He always has our back and supports us."

At the dawn of a new season, Davis said he doesn't feel the same complacency that teams sometimes feel after winning a title.

"They want to do it again. They really want to repeat," he said.

The archery season kicks off this weekend at the Connecticut State Indoor Championships.

muneeb.alam@columbiaspectator.com | @muneebalamcu