Four Points Middle School had an archery club for four years and now Vandegrift has an archery club as well.

“This is our first year for the high school which we are so excited about,” Coach of the club Leslie Barstow said. “We keep sending the high school some amazing archers and we would like to continue.”

Club members include freshmen who were previously in the club in middle school, but also students who are completely new to the sport.

“It gives other kids a chance who want to try it,” Barstow said. “It’s a lot of fun. And once you get through the first parts of training, we start practices, and we do tournaments.”

Coach Josh Stacey, who was the idea behind the club, was the head coach of Four Points before working at another high school. He decided to do archery and had 85 members.

“He had like three or four teams,” Barstow said. “He had three busloads of kids going to Belton for the state tournament.”

Future tournaments are set up like the club’s practices. Archers get five arrow practice at 10 meters and then 15 arrows scored at 10 meters and then the same for 15 meters for five practice arrows.

“We try to set our practices up just like competitions,” Barstow said. “There’s also a scoring; the highest you can score is 50 points for five arrows and the highest score you can make for the whole tournament is 300. That would be a perfect score and 50 every time.”

The club provides Genesis bows for members, which are compound bows (mechanical bows of modern day archery) of different colors ideally for youths such as the middle schoolers at Four Points.

“The Texas Parks and Wildlife say that’s what you use for indoor school archery,” Barstow said. “This way, everyone is on an even playing field, so whether it’s state whether it’s national, whether it’s world, every single archer for any of these competitions will use a Genesis bow.”

The schedule will be rather tight for Vandegrift students who are interested however, because for the time being, practices will only be on Mondays after school from 6:00 to 7:30. However, it is possible that the schedule will improve, such as having practices on Wednesdays and Saturdays. aIf anyone else wants to sign up for the club, then just go see the club sponsor, Lela Hammons, in room 1609, because so far, at least 25 high schoolers have signed up and are not only loving the experience for the first time, but also those who were former members.

“I did it in seventh grade, so I haven’t shot in two years,” Mackenzie Shaw said. “I really missed the competitions, so it’s really fun.”