Hundreds of students from all corners of Iowa will be in Des Moines this weekend to take aim at winning medals and scholarship money in the 18th annual state archery tournament.
Zach Benttine, the Iowa DNR’s archery coordinator, says the competition has continued to improve every year, along with the growing field of participants in grades four through 12.
“This will be the biggest tournament we’ve had to date. We’ll have almost 2,100 individuals competing in bullseye, representing 140 schools,” Benttine says, “and then 3-D, we have 1,020 students competing, and last year, our record number was 840, so we increased that by 180 archers.”
This state division of the National Archery in the Schools Program (NASP) features two types of competition. The bullseye tournament has traditional square targets with colored, concentric rings, while the 3-D tournament has students zeroing in on a half-dozen types of styrofoam animals.
“The standard six targets, no matter if you’re shooting at the Iowa NASP state championships or any of the other 50 states or the national, we have a stone sheep, we have an antelope, we have a white-tailed deer, a bear, a turkey and a coyote,” Benttine says, “so it’s your typical North American animals that you can see almost everywhere in the country.”
The top Iowa finishers this weekend will go on to the national tournament. The archery program was launched in Iowa in 2006 with a few pilot schools, and it’s quickly grown. Benttine says there’s a 10-hour curriculum that’s taught at each competing school. The sport, he says, is a tremendous equalizer.
“Anyone can shoot archery, and this gives the kids who maybe don’t wrestle or play basketball or baseball or any of the sports that end in -ball, it gives them an opportunity to feel a sense of their school,” Benttine says, “so they’re still an athlete for their school, so that’s a huge reason we see growth.”
The tournament runs Friday through Sunday at the Richard O. Jacobson Exhibition Center and the 4H Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.
Prizes include more than $10,000 in college scholarships based on performance at the state tournament, while another $13,000 will be awarded outside of the competition to archers based on academics, essays, and other criteria. Teams are also aiming for some $18,000 in archery equipment for their schools.