Archery Team Spotlight

By Kathryn Harris

High school archery falls under two umbrellas: KHSAA and National Archery for Schools Program (NAS). Archery for the KHSAA-only region competition in held in March, and then state in April. 

Because the KHSAA includes so fewmeets, most of the meets are hosted through NAS. These meets begin sparsely in November and December, with meets increasing to once a week in January until state. 

For the KHSAA archery state, only 150 teams can qualify to compete at their regional competition. 

Depending on how teams perform at state, they can qualify for nationals—which are held in May—and then beyond that, worlds. 

To prepare for these competitions, the team offers three practices a week at the Bowling Green Learning Center. This practice schedule is designed to allow archers to also participate in other winter or spring sports. There are also two practice options: one that happens 4:00-5:00 p.m., and another that is 5:30-7:30 p.m. This gives archers the flexibility to stay after school to attend club meetings or to catch up on school work.

The archery competitions are divided into two different “events:” traditional bullseye and 3D. In the 3D component competitions, the archer shoots at a foam animal, such as a deer. Despite that all archers on the team compete in bullseye, competing in 3D is an option. In addition, archers can qualify for state in both bullseye and 3D.

One example is Gabe McGrew, who qualified for KHSAA state in both bullseye and 3D. BGHS did not qualify for state as a team, but the top three individuals on non-qualifying teams can qualify, and Gabe was the second in the state.

Competing in so many of those meets can become very expensive as at every tournament, bullseye costs $7 per archer and 3D costs $10. The costs of buying equipment only adds to that expense.

In order to combat those expenses, BGHS has hosted two archery meets this school year—one at Buchanan Park and the other at BGHS—where they can make money from other teams who pay the competition fees.

All of the money made from the meet hosted at BGHS was donated to the Youth Service Center at both the junior high and school. Each school received around $4,100. 

Suzanne Harwood is the BGHS archers team’s head coach. Although she was never part of an archery team, she was inspired to learn how to shoot through her son’s involvement with the archery team when he was in high school and her daughter’s involvement in Girl Scouts.

Harwood was the leader of her daughter’s Girl Scout troop during the same time her son joined the archery team in his junior year of high school. Because a lot of the Girl Scout camps have archery, she wanted to be able to teach her troop how to shoot, so she worked to her archery certification. In addition, she became archery-certified to help the coaches on her son’s archery team at both their practices and meets. 

Harwood went on to lead archery ranges at Boy Scout “fun days.” When the archery coach for BGHS at the time, Leah Crusher, left to coach within the Warren County school district, she left the head coaching job open. The BGHS principal asked Harwood to apply for the job, knowing she was an experienced archer, as she had coincidentally taught his son at Boy Scout “fun days.” She applied for the job and has been head coach for six years now.

Her husband, Glen Harwood, is the head coach of the junior high team and assistant coach of the high school team. Marty Watson is the high school assistant coach. In addition, Keith Martin is a volunteer coach. 

Unlike many sports in the district, the archery team doesn’t have an elementary school feeder program. This means that students don’t have the opportunity to learn archery within the school district until they reach the junior high. This can make recruiting harder, as many students will already be committed to other sports they started in elementary school when they go into middle school.

Because of this, students are not required to tryout to join the team or participate in meets. For the state meet, only a team of 24 archers can go. Due to this, Harwood changes how she structures the team year to year: “In the past, I’ve had enough athletes where I had two teams, then at the end only one gets to go to state. Or I might have—we are a little bit smaller this year—so I have one team and just a few individuals.”

BGHS seniors Gabe McGrew and Josh Martin have had coaches from colleges like Midway University and the University of Cumberlands show interest in them continuing archery at their college. Gabe and Josh have both talked to different coaches, because participating in archery in college could provide scholarships for them.

Because most colleges that have archery programs are private schools, they often don't offer majors that potential recruits want to pursue. 

In addition, despite most commonly not having archery teams, many larger universities offer noncompetitive archery. Harwood explains how past BGHS archers have taken advantage of that opportunity at their colleges: “Murray State University has an archery team, but it’s more of a club; they’re not competitive. They don’t go to meets and stuff. You have Rachel Gill and Alec Duncan who are at Murray State that are on the club. They don’t do the outdoor 3D meets and that kind of thing that these other [private] universities are doing.”