SOLON — They sat in a silent gym, family and friends in the bleachers behind them. At the signal they arose, picked their bow from a rack and took a position along a blue line with a quiver of arrows at their side and a target ten or 15 meters downrange. Another signal, and they launched 15 arrows apiece before returning to their seats, again in silence.
Such was the Solon Archery Team’s tournament Saturday, Jan. 7 in the main gym at the high school.
Steve Madura is the head coach for both the high school (47 members) and middle school (53) teams. The program is in its 13th year and with 100 members, up from 86 last year. “We’re really happy to have a bigger team and are excited to do some good shooting this year,” he said.
All kids use a Genesis® bow (official bow of NASP® (National Archery in the Schools Program), the sanctioning body for school programs) ranging from ten-to-twenty pounds of pull or “draw weight,” but otherwise the same but for color. 15 shots are taken at ten meters followed by 15 shots at 15 meters with the highest possible score being 300. “We’ve had archers shoot in the 290s so that’s pretty close to perfect,” he added.
Kids can start in the sixth grade and compete through their senior year. Practice starts in mid-November with the goal of State competition in March. “We’re going to try to make it to Nationals this year, which is the second weekend in May (in Louisville, KY), so we’ll be going November to May.”
The team hosts one competition per season and participates nearly every Saturday for eight weeks.
“We try to get as much competition in as we can,” Madura said.
To qualify for the State Meet, the team has to be within the top 25 score wise.
“It’s gaining popularity. In our area Solon is one of the bigger teams, Prairie has a very big team, Washington has a very big team, Mid-Prairie (Wellman) is a very big team.”
NASP, he said, has the goal of exposing as many kids to archery as possible. To do so, if a NASP-sanctioned team competes in any NASP tournaments then the coaches have to go into the schools and provide ten hours of instruction (in gym classes). With a high school and middle school team, that’s 20 hours’ worth of classes for Madura.
The draw of archery (no pun intended), he explained, is it’s a sport for anybody. “It’s not just for the top athletes. Some teams bring fourth graders, and we’ll have a fourth grader standing next to an 18-year-old senior in high school, and both of them are shooting at the same targets with the same bows. It’s an equal sport for anyone.”
The high school team took first place out of five teams with 3,258 points while the middle schoolers were second out of five with 3,109.
High School team scores (top 12) — Brody Cash 282 (3rd place boys), Mike Yeomans 278 (6th place boys), Cora Sutton 278 (1st place girls), Owen Rekers 275 (9th place boys), Ashley Farnsworth 272 (2nd place girls), Elijah Cash 272, Trevin Wilcox 271, Justin Moore 217, Cole Winders 270, Ryan Bilskie 269, Sophia Miles 260 (10th place girls), and Evann Freerks 260.
For full results go to https://nasptournaments.org/TournamentDetail.aspx?tid=9102 and for more information on youth archery go to https://nasptournaments.org.
Gabe Nicholson loads an arrow during the Solon Archery Team’s competition Sunday, Jan. 8 at the high school.