Archive for April 7th, 2008

Archery in Schools, Part 1 of 3

Monday, April 7th, 2008

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program

Archery, the original shooting sport, is making a comeback in schools nationwide. Burnie Kessner is archery coordinator for Texas Parks and Wildlife.

Ninety-five percent of my job is, I’d say, is coordinating the archery in the schools program—The Texas National Archery in the Schools Program.

Forty-five states currently participate in The National Archery in the Schools program. Texas joined in 2004 to become the seventeenth state.

We got some schools on board in oh-five, and we really kicked off officially in February of oh-six with our first state tournament where we had a hundred and twenty kids. Our second state tournament was last February oh-seven, where we had almost four hundred kids.

And this spring the third tournament is expected to draw more than five hundred participants…which begs the question: what is it about archery that sees tournament involvement continually climb?

Schools are finding out all of the benefits and the great assets of having this program. It’s very inclusive. It doesn’t matter your gender, your physical ability doesn’t matter, your size doesn’t matter. As long as you can learn the process, as long as you can learn the process you can do archery and you can excel.

We’ll have more on the Archery in the Schools Program tomorrow.

That’s our show… our series receives support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…working to increase fishing, hunting, shooting and boating opportunities in Texas…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.