Coming into the second year for the archery team Coach Kyle Woolston has higher hopes for returning students. There are currently 49 students on the team, 17 of which are in junior high, the other 32 members are in high school.
“The big difference for this year is the depth of experience we bring back compared to last year. Of the 32 students on the high school team, 22 have experience competing at the state level with most of them having competed at Nationals and the World Tournament last year. Of the 17 junior high members, 7 have competed beyond the local level. Last year, the experience was new to everyone. With the added experience as a whole, we spend less time on explaining what each tournament will be like and how things work, and focus more on the shooting ability of the archers,” said Woolston.
Bringing back so many students who went to National or even to state level has an advantage from the very start of this season.
“We competed in our first competition this year on December 16th, at Tell City. We posted a quality score, and it was a great experience for our more inexperienced archers just to get experience in tournament format. Our next competition is January 27th at Switzerland County, then February 3rd at Scottsburg. Our State Qualifying event is scheduled for February 7th and will take place at Throop gym. We will be sharing the range with West Washington and South Central that evening in hopes of posting scores high enough to gain an invitation to the Indiana NASP State Tournament,” said Woolston.
With the program being so new here at PHS there are still doubts from some people, but not from Woolston.
“We are still a relatively young program, so it is exciting to see the students progressing at such a positive rate. We have archers shooting personal bests at practices as well as others improving on aspects of their archery skills each time out. With the success we achieved last year, we set our goals high with hopes of making a return trip to the World NASP Tournament, and the archers are working hard to reach those goals. We also have a great group of sponsors supporting the team this year. The students really take notice of these sponsors who are helping the program move forward and supporting the archers in the endeavors on the practice and tournament ranges,” said Woolston.
Story by Alexis DeCarlo
