Duncan Middle School’s archery team is taking aim at a successful year.
At DMS, the group is treated as a club instead of a sport, so much of the work is done outside of school hours. The activity is based on shooting an arrow with a bow and aiming for a target with colored rings on it. The main goal is to hit the middle of the bullseye.
However, different parts of the target are worth a different number of points. If you hit the target, but do not hit the colored rings, you earn 1 point. If you hit the outer (black) ring, you earn 4 points. The middle (blue) ring is worth 5 points. the inner red ring is worth 9 points. And the yellow bullseye is worth 10 points.
This year, there are more than 30 students on the archery team.
Addison Robison said “It puts a good effect on DMS by giving us another sport,” eighth-grader Addison Robison said.
Kids usually do archery because they hunt and would like to practice it by working on aiming and eye coordination.
Paisley Dore said, “I do archery because it’s very calming.”
Archery is a very focused and quiet sport, and it takes lots of dedication for the sport. Archery can be such a focused sport to where people start getting mental about it.
Coaches play a big role in the sport/club because coaches are what teaches the children what they need to know, sometimes even really important stuff. This year’s coaches include Mark Monteith, Stacy Pena and Justin Pena.
Students, who want to do archery, need to know about the big safety roles such as making sure there is an arrow in the bow before shooting so they don’t shoot a dry fire which could injure you or someone else. Another huge rule is when pulling out the arrows from the target, always put a hand back behind it to keep it steady so no one around gets poked.
“I love to learn new things in archery,” Kylie McPherson, seventh-grader, said.
