Mack S., June –
As the season comes to a close, I feel an overwhelming relief, as I’m sure everyone within NASP® is. I love archery just as much, or more, as any other, but the season is long. My team starts in November and usually ends in May. Over the season I have some good, and some great memories, but my favorite one happens just at the end of it. It is when my brother and I come together to play “Ring Around The Target”, the game that is slowly becoming our favorite.
I don’t really know when it started, but it came about when we first got our yellow and red, straight limb bows. These are different bows than the usual Genesis ones, they are either a fiberglass or plastic (it’s hard to tell) straight limb bow. The game arose when we wanted to try these different bows, and upon using them we found that they were incredibly simple and fun, we felt like some native American men you would see in an old western. As we got more comfortable using them, we started doing everything we wanted to try at practice with our usual Genesis bows, at home with these “new” straight-limbs. We went safely around the target, uphill, downhill, and so much more, just having fun. The arrows we used weren’t your average arrow either, they were the plentiful harvest of arrows from the ending season that needed repair. For a few hours, you could hear my brother and I cackling at how these bows shot and where the arrows landed. Well, this year we revisited the game on a weekend after Nationals, and it proved to be just as fun. With a few more tweaks to the game, arrows were scattered throughout the yard with a target in the center, and a vital goal of getting a certain color arrow in a certain ring was established. My brother would yell, “ Yellow arrow in a blue ring,” and you would hear me respond, “ Then get a purple in the 7 ring!” This would go on for hours, with, of course, us getting distracted and changing the rules or just shooting into the ground and target.
Though the game may seem immature, it is a fun, rising tradition for my brother and I to do after the long and strict season. After focusing for so long on trying to improve, it’s extremely enjoyable to just “shoot”. No rhyme or reason, no need to score well, and definitely no rules to follow. It lets us remember why we love archery, and kinda why we have rules in NASP®.
