Students love archery.
Which is why educators love archery.
Archery, taught in the schools as part of the physical education curriculum through the National Archery in the Schools Program (NASP), has proven to captivate students and leave educators awestruck by its uncanny ability to “connect” students with their school. School connectedness is widely recognized as a major factor in dropout prevention.
Boys and Girls Participate Together
Archery is one of the very few activities in which boys and girls can truly compete side by side, something that educators know helps with socialization.
Level Playing Field
Archery doesn’t favor the tall or fast or strong like so many other activities or sports. Archery really does level the playing field.
Lifetime Activity
Archery is a lifetime activity and one that can be done indoors or outdoors making it something students can do virtually anywhere and for the rest of their lives.
Do With Parents
One in five NASP® students take archery home as an activity to do with their parents.
Extracurricular Activity That Reaches The Unreachable
Archery can extend into an extracurricular activity and has proven to reach many students who participate in no other extracurricular activities. In countless cases, archery reached students that were previously deemed unreachable.
The Magic of NASP®
Changing lives one arrow at a time
Since its inception in 2002, NASP® has put a bow and arrow in the hand of over 18 million students, grades 4 – 12. What happens next is truly magical… 66% OF NASP STUDENTS are first time archers 1.3 million students in 8,967 schools participate annually in archery 87,504 unique competitive archers during the 2022-2023 season Over 104,650 educators have been trained in archery since the inception of NASP Student participation is literally 50%-50% male/female and, perhaps even more noteworthy, they participate together 58% of participating students say they feel more connected with their school thanks to NASP 40% of students report that they are more engaged in the classroom thanks to NASP 91% of students pursue (or want to pursue) other outdoor activities thanks to NASP In 2022-2023, there were 1,638 TOTAL NASP tournaments, a 20% increase over the previous year In 2019, at the NASP Eastern National Tournament, 14,946 archers participated making it the world’s largest archery tournament ever NASP has awarded over $4 million in cash scholarships to over 2000 students Since NASP started in 2002, it is no accident that archery participation numbers (outside of school) in the U.S. have grown from 7 million to 19.2 million.
