THE ACCIDENTAL ARCHER

Warming up for a recent archery competition, the tall, striking redhead with the familiar face noticed a group of men huddled nearby, talking quietly among themselves and glancing her way.

Finally, one worked up the courage to approach her.

“Those guys over there think you’re that famous actress,” he said. “But don’t worry, I straightened them out. I said, ‘For God’s sake, why would it be?’ ”

The redhead in question, Oscar winner Geena Davis, bursts out laughing as she tells the story.

Adds the 42-year-old star of such movies as “Thelma & Louise,” “A League of Their Own” and “The Accidental Tourist,” the 1988 film that earned her an Academy Award for best supporting actress, “He knew it was crazy.”

And was he ever wrong.

Two years ago, without any fanfare, Davis embarked on perhaps the most challenging role of her life: Olympic hopeful.

Her secret ambition was revealed last month, when she finished among the top 32 women in the 115th national target championships at Oxford, Ohio, qualifying for the Olympic archery trials.

Ranked 22nd, she will compete in the semifinals Sunday through Wednesday at Bloomfield, N.J., where the list of hopefuls will be reduced to eight for the finals Sept. 4-5 at the Olympic training center in Chula Vista.

If Davis makes it that far, and then finishes among the top three, she’ll be in Sydney next year competing for Team USA.

An Olympic pursuit that started with once-a-week lessons in the spring of 1997 has developed into a six-days-a-week, five-hours-a-day training regimen.

And Davis is delighted.

“I think I’ve already won,” says the actress, who is one of the oldest and is the least experienced of the women who will compete in Bloomfield. “After a short amount of time, I got to a level where I get to go to the Olympic trials. I think that’s really cool.”

Davis sort of stumbled upon the sport three years ago, thanks to Justin Huish of Simi Valley, whose success and grunge chic--ponytail, shades, backward cap, earring, baggy shorts--caught the nation’s fancy when, as a 21-year-old, he won an individual gold medal and also helped the United States claim the team gold in archery at the Atlanta Olympics.

At the time, Davis, a former high school hurdler and high jumper, was looking for a sport, something to do “beside read scripts all day.”

She found it on television.

“Archery first sort of entered my consciousness as something, other than what kids do in summer camp, during the Olympics,” she says. “They gave it a lot of coverage because the [U.S.] men’s team was doing so well. . . .

“Justin made it look really cool. They showed clips of him practicing at home in his yard, and I thought, ‘That’s something I can even practice at home. I wonder if I’d be good at that?’ ”

Eager to find the answer, she contacted the gold medalist.

“I went up to her house and showed her how to shoot,” Huish says of their first meeting. “And then she came out to my parents’ house and we set her up with all the equipment and got her shooting properly.”

When Huish saw that Davis was interested in archery for more than recreation, he advised her to find a coach and gave her a few names. She hired Don Rabska of Van Nuys, considered by many to be the nation’s top authority in the sport’s biomechanics.

“It didn’t take long to figure out that she was really, really serious and that it wasn’t just something she wanted to do for a movie,” says Rabska, who started working with Davis about two years ago. “The more she did it, the more she liked it, and it just went from there. . . .

“I think her goal was the Olympics from Day 1.”

Last fall, while filming her new movie, “Stuart Little,” on the Columbia lot, Davis arranged to have a target set up on the sound stage next door.

“It was great because there’s so much down time on films,” she says. “I’d just run over to the other stage and sling some arrows while they were setting up.”

Since shooting on the movie was completed in November, Davis has not signed for any other roles, and the extra time devoted to practice has paid off.

She won the California Cup two months ago in Sacramento, beating a field that included Janet Dykman of El Monte, a 1996 Olympian and the top U.S. finisher at the World Championships last month in Riom, France. (Dykman finished 22nd in Riom; Davis didn’t qualify.)

Later in June, Davis won a competition outside Florence, Italy.

“It’s really tremendous to progress as quickly as she has,” says Huish, who still occasionally practices with Davis. “I was shooting with her the other day and she was shooting pretty good, a couple of times even beating me. So it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if she made the Olympic team.”

Says Rabska, “She’s really pursuing this with sincerity. She’s really well focused. . . .

“She’s got a good natural shooting style--very relaxed and smooth. Her technique is among the very best out there.”

Davis’ rapid ascent in the sport is not unprecedented, Rabska says, but it’s rare.

Her chances of making the Olympic team are good, he says, “as long as she keeps her good mental game and stays focused.”

That may be more difficult at the trials, where Davis is sure to be the focus of increased media attention, now that her story is known.

“It’s been sort of an amazing, wonderful circumstance where, for the two years I’ve been doing this, it hasn’t really been public knowledge,” she says. “I’m really grateful that it stayed under wraps because I was able to just concentrate on my archery and not have to worry about all that. But I guess you can’t qualify for the Olympic trials and still keep it quiet.”