FIELD TWP- Six North Woods archers qualified for the National Archery in the Schools Western Nationals in Utah by scoring top-ten placements in state tournament competition in Duluth on March 25-26.
Grizzlies Buckley LeForte, Kaidence Scofield, Brady Swanson, Michaela Brunner, Cooper Long, and Merilee Scofield will shoot off against more than 1,200 fellow student archers in the Mountain America Center in Sandy, Utah, on April 29-30. The NASP is returning to in-person Western and Eastern national events after holding a virtual tournament last year due to COVID-19.
Emily Nelson is president of the North Woods Archery Club, and sending kids to national tournaments is something they’ve come to expect, she said.
“You can either qualify as an individual or a team,” Olson said. “This year we have individual qualifiers. We’ve had whole teams qualify, like the whole middle school team or elementary or high school.”
“Regular season meets are typically hosted at school, so taking the team to the state event at the DECC in Duluth is a fun and different atmosphere for the kids to experience,” Nelson said, “but nationals is a whole other level entirely.”
“When you go to nationals there are a thousand targets set up and then there’s a thousand kids shooting at one time,” she said. “Just the sound of it alone is really cool.”
Fifth-grader Buckley LeForte has lofty aspirations for when he gets to Utah. He’s shot a compound bow for a couple of years, he said, and while switching to the uniform competition bow required by NASP was a little tricky at first, he’s adapted well.
“I’d like to shoot in the high 280s, or maybe 290,” he said, marks that would be just short of perfection.
This is the first year that fifth-grader Michaela Brunner has had a bow in her hand, and she said she didn’t expect to do as well as she has. She said it’s fun and that she likes the mix between group and individual practice.
“It doesn’t take up all that much time,” she said. “We normally have Sundays here (at the school) and then Tuesdays at Ryan’s Rustic Railings. And then I practice at home.”
Seventh-grader Merilee Scofield has been shooting for three years and said she got into archery because it looked like fun. And it turns out she’s pretty good at it.
“This is the second time I qualified for nationals. I qualified last year, but when COVID started they shut everything down, so I didn’t get to go,” she said.
Merilee said she didn’t find out until the day after state that she’d qualified for nationals, and she’s looking forward to stepping up to the mark in Utah with a competitive mindset.
“I really get pumped up,” she said. “ I tell myself I’m going to do good and I really try.”
Randy Long’s son, fifth-grader Cooper, also qualified for nationals, and he has two more sons on the team, fourth-grader Brock and senior Eagen. Long has been one of the team’s coaches for 12 years.
“We have a lot of strong archers, especially this year with our elementary,” Long said. “We’ve had a fairly strong team throughout the district, region, and state. For a small community, we’ve produced some top notch archers. For the most part, this was a pretty straightforward year and we’re proud of our kids.”
Getting all the necessary equipment and traveling to tournaments near and far involves a good deal of expense, but because the team has established a track record of success they’ve been able look ahead and raise enough funds to cover three years in advance, Nelson said. And every three years they try to take all of the kids to nationals, even those who don’t qualify for the competition, so that they all get the experience of being there.
One of the team’s biggest sources of revenue is selling Zup’s pasties, she said. This year the team sold 1,314 pasties, earning about $4,000 that will go toward next year’s trip.
The team also received generous support from a number of different community sources.
“This year we got donations from the Cook Timberwolves Snowmobile Club; the Hibbing Archery Club donated money for the food for the banquet today,” Nelson said. “The Cook VFW donated $500 and the Cook Fire Department donated $250.”
“Archery is like no other sport,” Long said. “It takes funding and a lot of community effort to keep it going, and it takes a lot of coaches. There’s a lot of hands-on involvement. The community has done an excellent job helping us through our pasty sales and giving donations so that we can purchase equipment each year from bows to targets and target faces. They’ve even provided enough funding for us to buy (an equipment) trailer for the team.”