|
Sharpshooters earn 4th place at world
contest
Hayden
archery team hosts demonstration to show off
skills
BY BRIAN
SANDERS bsanders@therepublic.com
HAYDEN — The twang of bowstrings and the
thuds of arrows hitting their targets filled
the gymnasium at Hayden Elementary Thursday
afternoon. The Sharpshooters, the school’s
archery team, demonstrated the skills that
earned them fourth place in the first ever
world archery tournament held in Orlando,
Fla. It was on that big stage that
12-year-old Tyler Moore shot his first
perfect round. Each of Moore’s five arrows
found their way to the bull’s eye, good for
10 points each. Moore was jubilant.
“I was amazed, I freaked out once I shot
it,” he recalled.
The feat brought about a good end to
Moore’s second season with the team. The
sixth-grader first was introduced to the
sport in gym class by his teacher and
archery coach Jason Gambrel. It took just a
few shots for Moore to fall in love the
sport.
“You get really nervous at first,”
12-year-old Jamie Day said, recalling her
experience stepping up the shooting line at
the big tournament.
Fortunately, she took to heart a piece of
advice Coach Gambrel had repeated throughout
the season.
“Just keep shooting and if I mess up don’t
let the last arrow affect the next,” Day
explained.
In the end, the first-year archer scored a
respectable 251 out of a possible 300 in the
world tournament showing. Looking ahead to
next season, Day intends to focus on
improving her accuracy at 15 meters, an area
where she struggles.
Right on target
In four years, Hayden’s archery team and the
sport itself has come a long way. Hayden was
the first school in the state to implement
an archery team through the National Archery
in the Schools Program, Gambrel explained.
With Hayden’s help, Indiana became the 21st
state to adopt an archery program. By 2006,
every school in Jennings County had a team
and Gambrel has found the other schools are
quickly catching up to Hayden.
Hayden won the state archery championship
each year since 2007 and produced strong
showings at the national tournaments held in
Louisville, Ky. At the 2009 nationals,
Hayden placed 15th out of 53 schools, which
earned them an invite to the first world
tournament held Oct. 9 and 10 at Disney’s
ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in
Orlando. To participate, the team raised
$18,000 in two months to cover travel
expenses. The goal was easily met with
donations and sponsorships from parents,
proud Hayden residents and various
organizations throughout the county.
Now ranked fourth in the world after turning
in a record-breaking team score of 3,035,
Gambrel feels the pressure to keep his team
on top as the skills of archers at other
Jennings County schools increase.
“There’s no more ‘you were the first’,”
Gambrel said. “Now you’ve got all these
crazy archers that are really good and here
they come.”
He looks to Brush Creek to challenge Hayden
most in the upcoming season, but other area
schools cannot be taken for granted.
“We’re not going to win a state tournament
one of these times and it could be this year
but you don’t want to let that happen
anytime soon,” Gambrel said.
The coach hopes the next step for archery in
Jennings County is to implement a season
where individual schools compete against
each other.
No matter the future, Gambrel said he takes
pride in helping introduce the sport to
schools in Indiana.
“You always have this sense of pride because
the whole deal started in this little gym
right here in the state and now it’s
branched out.”
Gambrel believes archery can even have a
positive impact in the classroom. “It’s
really made a difference for a lot of kids …
it forces them to focus … and I think
sometimes that carries over to the
classroom,” he said.
*Special Note* The text was edit only to
make it appear cleanly on IndianaNASP.com |
