Adairville Archery in the midst of successful season

Steve Stratton is assistant principal of Adairville School

Adairville Archery is off to a strong start this year. After losing some great shooters from last year’s team, coaches thought this might be a rebuilding year, but have been pleasantly surprised at the early tournament finishes.

Joseph Hallman began the season with at fourth place finish at Trigg County, shooting a solid 272 score. The season began in earnest on January 27 – 28 with the Auburn Tournament, where the Cardinals shot a strong 3,004 to earn second place behind Lewisburg (3,219 score) and just ahead of Olmstead. Amber Anderson led the Cardinals with a blistering 282 score, a career high, followed closely by Hallman 267, Austin Rayno 261, Christian Lynch 259, Meagan Ferguson 254, Brinkley Warren 252, Gunnar Gloyd 245, Edward Lynch 244, Preston Knight 243, Alex Hughes 237 and Sam Knight 232,. Will Robey rounded out the top t12 scoring with a 228.

The following weekend the team traveled to Lewisburg for the Ranger Classic with a team finish in third place behind number one Lewisburg and second place Henderson North. The Cardinals slipped some that week with a 2,995 score. I don’t have the individual scores for this tournament I apologize for losing them, or misplacing those sounds better.

On February 10-11 the team participated in the first ever Olmstead Archery Challenge. Olmstead began its program this year under Coach Buddy Wright and is off to a great start, fielding both an Elementary team and a Middle School team. Adairville closed the gap on Lewisburg on a bitter cold Saturday, finishing in second place with at score of 3,118 just 80 points shy of the Ranger win with a 3,198 score. Leading the way for the Cardinals was Grace McLellan with a career high 273 score. She had practiced only once this year after completing a very successful basketball season. Close behind Grace was Anderson with a 272, Christian Lynch 272, Dayton Thompson with a career high 270, Rayno 265, Jordan Campbell 263, Ferguson 263, Hallman 257, Hughes 257, Mark Lynch with a career high 249, Gloyd 240, and Warren 239 to round out the top 12 scoring.

This weekend the Cardinals will shoot at Chandlers and are looking to overtake the Rangers in this one as the team begins to come together after basketball season has ended. The following weekend, February 24^th and 25^th, we will host the Fifth Annual Cardinal Classic with over 400 students from Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee coming to Adairville for what promises to be a high caliber tournament, as teams begin to look toward the Fourth Region Tournament at LCHS on March 9^th and 10^th.

Other team members include, Mason Freeman, Mikey Creek, Delaney Brewer, Carter Spivey, Dylan Byrum, Samuel Noe, Justin Wix, Austin Wix, Seth Anderson, Shleby Byrum, Bradley Dozier, Tristan Dozier and Preston Gregory.

One major change coming up in Archery is that beginning with the 2012 – 2013 school year Archery will become an official KHSAA sport. For the first year it will be high school only, but the plans are to add Middle School to the list of official sports within two years. This should increase the number of schools with programs, with some projections that 100 percent of high schools will have a program within two years. Archery is the one sport that anyone can become successful at with practice and determination, size or speed having nothing to do with Archery skills. In last yea’rs State Tournament Parent Student Shoot, I had the privilege of shooting next to a young lady who was blind, and she out-shot me.

Come check out the action at a local tournament. I think you will find the excitement and fun worth the price of admission.