(soft music) (light music) - [Brett] The National Archery in the Schools Program has put bows in the hands of more than 18 million students grades four through 12.

The program's goal is to change lives one arrow at a time, as students learn focus, self-control, discipline, and patience.

(light music) The Lakes International Language Academy, a Forest Lake charter school, has fewer than 1300 K through 12 students, but its competitive archery teams are among the best in the country.

- We started out with probably about 10, 15 kids in the club.

- This year, we're 60 kids.

When I first started this team, I didn't think I would ever see this many kids.

- We've got a lot of really promising shooters that are coming up that are taking it really seriously.

You can tell that they're really into it.

Last year when we won the State Tournament, it was the first time that LILA had ever qualified as a team for a national tournament.

And so we were beside ourselves with joy that we could take the full team.

- [Brett] The high school team place third in the 2022 3D National Competition.

- There are two kinds of targets.

There's bullseye and 3D.

The bullseye is the one that's gonna be more common.

When people think, "oh, archery," it's that kind of the yellow, red, blue, different color circles.

You get a bullseye if it's the one right in the middle.

And that's the one most people start out on.

When you go to 3D, that is when you have replicas of animals that are standing at various distances away and you're trying to shoot.

It isn't exact circles.

Actually, it's spaces where the vital organs could be and you're trying to get within those circles the different point values.

- [Brett] When we stopped by LILA's archery practice, students were getting ready for the 2023 state competition.

At that tournament, held in March, LILA's middle and high school teams brought home first and second place medals in the bullseye and 3D events.

In April at the Western National Tournament in Utah, both teams placed first in bullseye and the high school team took first in 3D.

- [Host] Lakes International Language Academy.

(crowd cheering) - [Brett] And Jameson Rydeen placed first in both events.

The championship performance was an emotional season finale for the team's three seniors: Captain Sophia Johnson, Brooklyn Corbett, and Nakai Martinez.

- I mean, after 10 years, it's kind of like an era is ending and I'm not ready for it yet.

- Basically, we do everything together.

We put stuff up together, we shoot together, we encourage each other.

- [Brooklyn] It is definitely like a family here and we all get to know each other and we go out and have fun.

And we hang out more than just at practice and at tournaments.

(light music) - [Dan Kempenich] I'm a competitive person.

You know, I'd be a liar if I didn't find a lot of enjoyment in the success.

How that shows on kids' faces.

- So what I like about archery is it's a team sport and also an individual sport.

So you can work for a personal best, and even if you don't do as well your score also contributes to the overall team score, too.

- Every match consists of eight rounds: four rounds at 10 meters, four rounds at 15 meters on a bullseye range, okay?

The first round at each distance is a practice round.

And then you shoot five arrows in each subsequent round and those five arrows are used to create your score for that round.

And the scores range from a perfect 10, dead center on the target, out to a one, the furthest ring outside on that bale.

If you get all five tens, you get a perfect 50 and it's a perfect round.

So the max score is 300.

You shoot a perfect 50 and it's reason to celebrate.

As coach, as we go up and we announce.

When someone gets a perfect 50, announce it, everyone applauds for 'em and they get a pin.

- This is where I put all my pins.

I've gotten, one of them fell off, but I think it's like 19 or something in the eight years I've been doing archery.

We have a lot of people that shoot a lot of 50s here.

So we generally only give them out to the first three 50s of each year.

- I've been shooting for 10 years, so they kind of like rack up.

This year I think I'm at three.

So, but in total, I think I'm around like 50.

(chuckles) - We had to start limiting how many pins we give archers during practice 'cause we have some archers that would walk away with a wheelbarrow full.

We don't stop celebrating, but we don't give 'em a pin.

(chuckles) (soft upbeat music) - When you're shooting 3D, there are no colors.

So you can't always be, "Okay, I'm gonna aim for kind of on the side of this yellow."

You can't do that because it's an animal.

So you have to look at it and say, "I'm gonna look at where this leg is and I'm gonna bring my bow up from there and I'm gonna shoot once I get to the top of the animal."

Typically, it'll be kind of a center-ish circle on where the heart would be.

And then there'll be kind of oblong, almost oval-like shapes around that circle.

So the center circle will be a 10, then there'll be an oval around it, and if you get in that, it'll be a nine.

So if you hit the deer in a head, it is only a seven, which is another thing that is interesting about 3D.

If you hit the animal anywhere, it is always at least going to be seven points.

So it's a high risk, high reward form of archery because if you miss the animal, it's a flat out zero.

If people hunt, it might be what they start with.

- We've talked to kids about, "Hey, are you a hunter?"

Most of 'em say no.

Most of their dads are standing in the background going, "Not yet."

(laughs) - If it were up to me, I would start 'em all here first and then go into hunting.

'Cause once you learn this style of shooting, when you go to shoot for hunting, it's just so much.

It's made me a way better shot.

(light music) - [Brett] Before going to state, LILA's teams compete in regional tournaments.

- Everybody can still sign up for state.

They have not gone into a qualification to go to state yet.

It's not governed by MSHL, by the Minnesota High School League.

It's not.

It's still governed by NASP, National Archery in the School Program.

- So the max number of competitors per tournament is 24.

We've got 24 middle schoolers.

So every score can count towards the team score, which is your top 12, four boys, four girls, and then the next four best.

Individually then they're competing on a scale of 300.

They're competing against everybody else that's in their age group.

Boys compete against boys, girls compete against girls.

On average, score for a beginning archer and stuff can be in that low 200s, mid 200, somewhere in there.

- Some of those kids we've had go from 220 to 280 in a single year and they had never touched a bow before.

When we first started with the kids that we had, we were really excited when somebody broke a hundred.

And as those coaches learned and learned how to teach them and get them competitive faster, well, once that happened it snowballed from there.

It's like, hey, it doesn't take us two or three years to get somebody shooting competitive anymore.

Some of 'em we can get 'em shooting competitively right out of the gate.

(light music) - [Brett] Beside competitive teams, LILA has a non-competitive archery club for fourth through sixth graders to introduce them to the sport.

That's how the school's archery program started in 2011.

- And LILA at the time only went to sixth grade.

So they didn't have a a middle school or a high school at the time.

My son was in fourth grade and all of a sudden I saw this notice for archery.

And I've been shooting archery since probably '91 myself.

Actually, the signup was for kids, but they were also looking for parents to help, to help coach.

We knew some of their coaches from White Bear and White Bear invited us to their holiday tournament.

So we're like, "Holiday tournament?

Well that sounds like fun.

It was right before the holiday break.

Yeah, we'll go shoot some arrows."

The coaches could shoot and the kids could shoot and they had such a good time.

And at the time we had no idea that there were other tournaments.

We didn't know that there was this big state program where all these schools got together and shot in these tournaments on Saturday in the winter.

And we went to our first tournament where there was all these other schools.

All these kids are going up there getting their trophies and their medals and we're like, looking at the other coaches, I'm like, "We gotta do this.

Our kids would love this."

- [Jenni] And as we built the upper school and expanded in our grades, then the archery club in 2015-16 turned into a team.

- My brother wanted to shoot, but I did not at all.

So my mom kinda signed us both up without telling me.

And on the first night, she was like, "Well, tonight we have something special we have to go to."

And I really did not wanna go.

Like kicking, screaming, "Please do not make me go."

But, I ended up going and shooting and by the end of the night I went home and was like, "When am I getting my own bow?

And how long can I shoot?"

(laughs) When we first started out, we just had a middle school and we barely even had 12 archers.

And at tournaments it's 12 archers that make up a team and that's how you get your score.

- Two of my good friends, Stella and Noah, basically said we need one more person for a high school team.

And I said, "Sure.

How hard can it be?"

They didn't necessarily need me to be good.

They just needed to be able to qualify because they had such good archers already that it didn't really matter who else was shooting for them.

They just needed one more person.

And here we are, four years later.

I'm still in archery.

- When we first started with our archery team, a lot of the teams that we were up against you know, they had like Madamiday or Melaka, like those huge programs that have hundreds of archers.

- Then the team got bigger and we had more kids interested.

We started, all of a sudden, we'd win one medal a year.

It was like, "All right, we're on our way, right?"

And then we win a trophy and a couple medals.

And then next thing you know, we're winning 40 to 80 medals a year and we're winning all kinds of trophies, and now a couple of State Championships and a nice third place finish at 3D in Nationals.

And so, yeah, so the program has come a long way.

It's been a lot of work.

- It's a really engaged group.

People, I mean, it's a lot of hours.

The number of hours that the coaching staff puts into the season.

Between practices, three hours a night every Saturday we're there.

It's almost a full day affair and stuff.

From starting in November we're practicing.

Tournaments start in January and we go through March through the state tournament and then if we go to nationals, we'll keep on going through April.

- [Brooklyn] There's a ton of schools that are now shooting 'cause it's a constantly growing sport.

- You don't have to be athletic to be in the sport.

I also play volleyball and that to some extent you have to be able to run.

You don't have to be able to walk for archery.

- Tonight, we have a kid in a walking booth.

He would've been out of action for how many weeks when he broke his ankle.

And instead, he's on the line every week.

I've seen kids that could not compete in most high school sports, but also being part of a team that's been as successful as we have.

So you see kids that are in wheelchairs that are on the line competing in tournaments.

- Anybody can shoot, anybody.

We've talked, I've had kids walk up to the line holding the bow upside down.

No idea what they're doing.

And turn around and end up being pretty good archers.

If you're a school that doesn't have archery and you see this and you're like, "God, we want that."

Let us know.

We're more than happy to help any other school, anywhere we can reach.

White Bear Lake helped us get set up, and that's how it works.

And the community of archery schools throughout the whole state is pretty tight.

And I've had so many parents say, "This is it.

This is our last hope of getting them involved in something because they're nothing else is stuck inside."

You came to the right place 'cause most of 'em stick.

(light upbeat music)