KVSA donation brings archery back to the middle school

A $1500 donation from the Kootenai Valley Sportsman Association has revived the archery program at Boundary County Middle School.

The donation allowed the middle school to purchase 10 dozen arrows, 5 new targets and 2 additional bows. The National Archery in the Schools Program (NASP) was started by the Wildlife Turkey Federation in Kentucky. With the help of the Idaho Fish and Game and donations from local sportsman’s groups like the Kootenai Valley Sportsman Association, physical education teachers could become trained and receive free equipment to use in their class.

According to Travis Hinthorn, "We started in the early 2000’s. Chad Farrens’ children were coming through the middle school at that time and he did a great job taking care of our equipment. He would take bows home and they would come back fixed the next morning. He would also keep up our arrow supply. But after years of use, just like everything else, our targets and arrows wore out and we did not have the money to replace them.”

Last summer Ken Brink asked if the BCMS still had an archery program and that he was in the Kootenai Valley Sportsman Association and would like to donate to the program. The Sportsman Association donated to the program when it first started, but had not recently and was wondering how our equipment was holding up. Hinthorn had not used it the last couple of years due to wear of the out dated equipment. Brink asked how much we would need to get started again and the next thing Hinthorn knew the money was in the middle school office, ready for the program

Naples elementary school also uses the archery equipment through their H.A.T.S. (humanities, arts, technology, and science) program.