Lafayette Archery Travels to Jackson for Tournament

Lafayette archery team members: Anna Grace Allen, Jay Crowder, Barl Boytin and coach Curtis McLarty

The Lafayette County School District is excelling in all areas from academics and sports, and in just its second year, the archery team looks to take the state competition by storm.

Lafayette has moved the archery team into the high school after a year of having a middle school team compete in competitions.

Coach Curtis McLarty discusses the process for what it takes to get a team to the state level.

This week, the Commodores archery team will travel down to Jackson to compete in the state competition looking to improve on their eighth place finish from last year. After the middle school received a first place finish at the north half while the high school team finished third in their respective divisions.

Lafayette received its invitation to compete in the state competition after shooting a 2700 as a team at a match earlier this season.

To get the score of at least 2700 or better the judges take the top 12 shooters scores that have to be equal with same amount of girls and boys to come up with the overall score.

The level of intensity steps up going from the the match level to north half even to state with the number of shooters on the line at one time. At north half they have 90 shooters at one time and at state 150 are lined up to shoot at once.

“At a competition the shooters go off a chain of whistle commands to prepare them to start and once they hear the commands they know what to do and they are going to take care of business,” coach McLarty said. “With their never being an injury in our sport, it shows the quality of kids that come out and maturity for the sport.”

Between the two Lafayette schools, 52 students participate in the sport of archery. Since most of the competitors love to hunt, it prepares them to excel in their craft of shooting a bow, while others thought it might be a fun activity and just wanted to try a new extracurricular.

For most of the shooters, its their second year on the team, and Jay Crowder and Anna Grace Allen have both seen improvement in shooting. Allen, who is now in ninth grade, shot a 240 at north half when in middle school she tried to get a 200 at competition.

Eighth grader Barl Boytin said that in practice he was shooting a 209 and in competition he hit either a 180 or 190, so competition can be more nervous for some.

As this sport continues and students continue to improve on their craft people, the Lafayette archery team will excel.

Adam Brown is HottyToddy.com sports editor and can be reached at adam.brown@hottytoddy.com.