1,040 Youth Compete In The 2015 NASP State Championship

It’s encouraging to see more than 1,000 youth shooters spend a day during the school week flinging arrows down range to see who is top dog. I continue to be amazed at the popularity of Georgia’s National Archery In The Schools Program (NASP) and the great job WRD has done to promote it.

In all, 1,040 youth registered to compete at the 2015 Georgia NASP State Championship held March 25 at the fairgrounds in Perry. To qualify for the state event, about 2,000 archers shot in one of eight regional tournaments, and roughly the top half of those shooters advanced to the state. This state competition has been going on since 2007.

Youth compete in one of three divisions: Elementary School (4th-5th grade), Middle School (6th-8th grade) and High School (9-12 grade). The scoring is based on Olympic-style target archery competition with all students shooting identical Mathews Genesis bows and identical Easton arrows.

Matt Stewart, WRD’s hunting and shooting education specialist for southeast Georgia, said archers were scored on 30 arrows, but each shooter also got 10 practice shots. The event was smoothly run with five different flights of shooters. In just six hours of competition, more than 40,000 arrows were shot and scored.

High-School Division: Dodge County High School in Eastman collected their second state championship at the March 25 state championship. Their first and only other state title came in 2012.

Dodge County High School student Morgan Graham scored 295 out of 300 and was the highest-scoring male for the entire event.

Middle-School Division: Bagley Middle School in Chatsworth won their second consecutive state championship. They’ve won championships in the last four out of five years; in 2015, 2014, 2012 and 2011.

Elementary-School Division: Woodlawn Elementary, also located in Chatsworth, won another state title, giving them an impressive five state championships out of the last six years. They’ve taken home state titles in 2015, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010.

Woodlawn is the only team in Georgia to win a national title at the NASP National Tournament, which is the largest archery tournament in the world, according to Guinness. Woodlawn won national titles in 2011 and 2013. Both times they beat the best 300 schools in the country.

Cohutta Elementary actually beat Woodlawn Elementary in regional competition earlier this year, and some were wondering if they’d take the state elementary title this year. They missed the title by only 22 points. Cohutta will be a school to watch in the future.

National Tournament: Matt reports that there will be 29 Georgia schools represented at the NASP National Tournament May 7-9 in Louisville, Ky. In all, 20 teams will be represented, and the other nine are sending individuals who qualified. In all, there are 511 Georgia kids going to nationals, the most ever from Georgia.

There are expected to be 10,000-plus shooters from 40-plus states at the nationals, and more than $100,000 in scholarships will be given out.

Want NASP In Your School? To get Georgia NASP in your school, contact Jennifer Pittman, WRD’s hunting & shooting education supervisor, at (770) 388-0045 or [email protected].