Nice read. Came across this article while visiting an archery forum.
Copy and Pasted from Startribune.com (I had to C&P cause the link from article had to have a login) :
Dennis Anderson: Can archery save our young people? One Minnesota youth archery program is based on a national plan, another is very local. Both aim to teach kids more than how to hit a target.
Champlain Middle School has an elective archery class, and Champlain Park High School has taken on one as well. Those teaching say that the class instills better discipline and attendance in students. The middle school program is sponsored by a parent who put up the money for 11 bows, arrows, targets, training and teachers, working with Gander Mountain. Wesley Ware, 13, readied his bow for a shot at a bear target. Stormi Greener Star Tribune Listen to Ryan Bronson, Barry Boevers and Travis Stewart long enough and you might be convinced archery can save America.
Or at least Minnesota.
Until a few years ago, Boevers, a teacher at Jackson Middle School in Champlin, Bronson, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources hunter recruitment supervisor, and Stewart, a teacher at John Glenn Middle School in Maplewood, didn't know one another.
Boevers and Stewart still have never met.
But each is part of a movement taking wing today that in a couple of years will introduce archery to more than 100,000 Minnesota school kids-- and to participation in state and national youth archery championships.
In fact, someday, archery -- which once was a popular physical-education activity in Minnesota schools -- might be a high school sport in the state, enabling Minnesota to become, perhaps, a training ground for Olympic archery hopefuls.
But that's getting ahead of the story.
First, let's look at how Bronson, Boevers and Stewart figure into youth archery development in Minnesota.
From Bronson, the big picture Since his appointment a couple of years ago by DNR Commissioner Gene Merriam as the agency's hunting recruitment director, Bronson has explored many ways to increase hunter numbers in Minnesota.
The issue is an important one, not just to the DNR, which is funded in part by hunting-license sales and federal excise taxes derived from the sale of hunting gear, but to natural-resources conservation.
Traditionally, hunters -- and anglers -- have paid the bulk of conservation costs in America. If that funding source dries up, it's feared that efforts to save wildlife lands and retain clean rivers and lakes will similarly dry up.
Bronson's challenge has been to determine ways to expose broad segments of the state's youth population to field sports at a time when urbanization, single-parent families and the rise of school-team activities has led some Minnesotans away from hunting and fishing.
Or at least made it difficult for parents to pass these traditions to their sons and daughters.
In 2003, Bronson caught a break. Kentucky, as it happened, was facing similar challenges, and a plan was born there that became known as the National Archery in the Schools Program, or NASP.
The point in Kentucky, as it has become in the 37 other states where the program has caught on (Minnesota is second in size in school participation only to Kentucky), was to expose kids to archery, thereby -- the plan went -- perhaps ensuring the futures of both hunting and conservation.
But something happened that wasn't entirely expected.
Kids who participated in archery, it seemed, benefited in many ways other than simply gaining knowledge about another sport. Self-esteem rose among young archers. A sense of accomplishment developed among participants. And kids who previously wanted little or nothing to do with physical education classes showed up eagerly for classes when archery was taught.
Soon, Kentucky's archery program was exported to other states. But first, some facets of the plan had to be standardized.
Equipment, for instance, had to be procured for participating schools. And the gear had to be the same for each school, so that -- as organizers envisioned -- regional, state and national tournaments could eventually be held.
Soon, archery manufacturers and others in the archery and hunting businesses were brought on board as funding sources and equipment providers.
Today, those equipment packages cost about $2,000 per school, a cost split in Minnesota among the DNR, which this year will spend about $65,000 in lottery money on school archery gear, with a matching sum put up by participating schools and various Minnesota archery clubs and retailers.
Any increase in interest in archery among Minnesota youth (youth resident Minnesota archery license sales rose from 5,700 in 2000 to 6,880 in 2004) benefits all involved, Bronson said: the kids, their schools, the DNR and the state.
"You don't have to be the top athlete in the class to be the top archer, and girls can do as well as boys," Bronson said. "In fact, top youth archers in the state shoot last year were girls.
"Archery also allows kids who aren't engaged in school activities, or school itself, to get excited about something. It especially seems to help the self-esteem of kids who aren't doing well. And that's good for the schools."
The DNR, meanwhile, benefits anytime it can introduce a kid to a shooting sport, which can be a precursor to participation in hunting. Additionally, because the sale of archery gear is taxed by the federal government, and those taxes are returned proportionately to state wildlife agencies, state conservation funding also benefits.
One teacher's experience Barry Boevers is a busy guy. In addition to being a phy-ed teacher at Jackson Middle School in Champlin, he coaches various sports at that school and at Champlin Park High School.
As a former college football coach, Boevers is not unfamiliar with the macho side of organized athletics.
But there he was the other day, in a gymnasium at Jackson Middle School, touting the benefits of the National Archery in the Schools Program -- not only for naturally athletic kids but especially for kids who never have shot, hit or thrown a ball.
In fact, some in the latter group are the best archers in his school.
"Our school team took second in the state tournament last year," Boevers said proudly.
As Boevers spoke, 13-year-old John Ebert drew back his bow and, from a distance of 10 meters, fired an arrow into a target's bull's-eye.
Though small in stature, Ebert obviously knew what he was doing with a bow.
"That's what I like most about archery," Boevers said. "You can take a 6-foot-tall jock and give him a bow and he can't hit the target. Put a 4-foot, 6-inch girl next to him and she might hit the bull's-eye all day."
Phy-ed in Boevers' school is optional in seventh and eighth grades, so archery, which attracts kids to classes they might not otherwise want to attend, is an important draw for Boevers and other phy-ed teachers at Jackson Middle.
As participants, through the Minnesota DNR, in the National Archery in the Schools Program, Boevers and other Jackson phy-ed teachers, including Nick Heuer, conduct archery classes in a standardized way.
They use the same Genesis bows kids elsewhere in the nation use, the same arrows, shoot from the same distances (10 and 15 meters) and practice according to the same strict safety rules.
"The kids shoot the bows 'instinctively,' " Boevers said, "because the bows have no sights. And the kids use no mechanical releases. They pull back and release the bowstring with their fingers."
B......Different program, similar goals
Travis Stewart is a man with a mission similar to that of the National Archery in the Schools Program.
A seventh-grade science teacher at John Glenn Middle School in Maplewood, Stewart is a one-man dynamo who about six years ago founded an archery club at his school.
The club welcomes all comers. But Stewart particularly seeks out kids who are having problems in the classroom or at home.
Like the National Archery in the Schools Program, Stewart's club uses archery, as it were, as a metaphor -- a framework by which, over time, discipline and accomplishment are realized by participating kids.
But Stewart's program also differs in many ways from the national youth archery plan.
One way is that it stresses not only the importance of archery but the wonders of bow hunting. Another is that Stewart ties the privilege of participation in the club with effort in the classroom.
"Our older club members become instructors after about three years of participation and training," Stewart said. "Those instructors, in turn, can earn credits toward the purchase of their first bow by tutoring younger club members who are having trouble in class."
About 40 percent of families with kids at John Glenn Middle School are at or below the poverty line. For kids of those families, chances to learn skills in archery and hunting are difficult to come by. Archery equipment for many is prohibitively expensive. And few, if any, would have the chance to hunt, were it not for Stewart's club.
John Larsen, owner of Bwana Archery in Little Canada, is a strong backer of Stewart and his club. Similarly, the Safari Club has in the past helped supplant the club's approximately $20,000 annual budget -- money that is used for equipment and the kids' hunting excursions in fall, among other expenses.
