Aiming high for 2024

Archery season is back and bigger than ever.

With over 80 archers, the New Rockford-Sheyenne archery program, which has always seen great participation numbers, is beginning this season with its largest group yet.

Mike Schaefer, NR-S archery coach, said they've got 81 students signed up for this year.

With the program's previous high-water mark being 72, this year's numbers set a new record in the program's history.

What will be their biggest season ever comes after one of their best seasons a year ago, when their middle school team won a state championship and the program sent 27 archers to the national tournament.

The team will undoubtedly be striving to defend their state championships and potentially win some new ones this year.

One archer to watch will be Layton Jacobson, who won the state championship for 3-D archery in the middle school boys' division a season ago, and went on to place fourth at nationals.

Jacobson is also a previous national champion in bullseye, and he'll be looking to return to the top step this year.

Another archer to keep an eye on will be Sawyer Huso.

Last year Huso took third place at nationals in the 3-D event for middle school boys', and then 8th place in the same division for bullseye.

Of course, both Huso and Jacobson routinely score higher than most high school archers in the country, let alone North Dakota.

In fact, at the NASP Western Nationals in 2022, Jacobson scored a near-perfect score of 295, besting all 755 male archers in attendance and earning himself the title of best male archer in the nation.

Of course, the program's aim this season is to continue sending archers to nationals and producing fantastic results as they have in years past.

Schaefer said practices began at the beginning of January.

"We just bring them in and they just practice, they just shoot," said Schaefer about how the team has been preparing for the season.

"We just try to help them if they have any trouble, have any questions," he added. "It's like basketball, the more you shoot the better you get."

Regardless of how well NR-S archers perform this season, Schaefer said it's great to see so many students participating in the activity.

Having exceptional archery ability and knowing one's way around a bow and arrow, particularly in North Dakota, is a desirable and useful skill, which perhaps explains its popularity.

"I think it's something new that I think they wouldn't get a chance to try if we didn't have it available at the school," said Schaefer. "And it could be something that they can continue to do for the rest of their life, and if they didn't have this opportunity they might not know."

The program's first tournament of the year took place in Kensal on Saturday, Jan. 20, which will be covered in next week's edition of the Transcript.

Coming up, the Rocket archers have a couple of events close to home, beginning with the Carrington tournament on January 27, and then the New Rockford tournament on February 3.

Be sure to support the NR-S archers this year, especially at their close-to-home events, as they embark on what's sure to be another great season.