Victoria Baird said she wasn’t having one of her best days competitively, but the smile on her face showed that she was still having a good time.
One reason for the smile is the passion she has for the sport of competitive archery. Another was the opportunity to hang out with her fellow archers, many of whom she considers to be her extended family members.
Baird, 17, of Jonestown, was one of over 210 youths from across Pennsylvania who competed Sunday in the Pennsylvania Scholastic 3D Archery’s (S3DA) annual Indoor Target State Championship at Lebanon Valley Expo Center.
“Today’s not been my greatest. I’ve had better days, but it’s not been my worst,” said Baird during the competition. “So it’s kind of just one of those in-between days where I’m, ‘Well, I’m here to shoot. I’m here to have fun today.’ I’m just trying to stay calm.”
Baird, a senior at Northern Lebanon High School, looks calm as she banters with her fellow archers between rounds. Participants calculate their individual scores for each of the five arrows they shot in a given round.
“I like the fact that it’s competitive, but you’re still friends with the competitors. And as much as you compete against people, you’re also competing against yourself,” said Baird. “It’s very much a self-interest type of sport where you have to focus on yourself and how you’re shooting and how your process is going to make sure you’re having a good competition.”
For Baird, the archery community is one big extended family whose common bond is a love for one of the oldest art forms known to mankind. An internet search reveals that the bow and arrow were invented in Africa nearly 72,000 years ago.
Baird is a member of the Palmyra Archers, an organization that’s part of the Palmyra Sportsmen’s Association, based in North Annville Township.
“I definitely met some of my closest and bestest friends throughout the sport. You do get very close with people that you compete against because you’re always seeing them from weekend to weekend and from practice to practice,” she said. “So you do develop a very close, almost familial bond. My one friend Kylee, we see each other about six days a week sometimes.”
The sport is geared towards families, according to Baird’s dad, Frank, who has been an archery hunter since he was a teenager.
“My daughter got into it through me, and she’s gotten into the competition and it really gave us a family thing to do,” said Frank. “In addition to that, my wife and I have gotten involved and we are helping more.”
Frank is the southeast regional coordinator for the Pennsylvania S3DA and head coach for the Palmyra Sportsmen’s Association’s S3DA club. “We’ve met a lot of great people through this. We’ve had a lot of good times and it’s been a wonderful experience. That’s what drives us to keep participating in it.”
Delia Smith, 14, of Palmyra, said she was introduced to archery at a day camp that included one hour of target shooting each day. Realizing she really enjoyed it, the 9th-grade home-schooled daughter of Justin and Devon Smith decided to pursue it at the local sportsmen’s club, just 10 minutes from her home.
“One of my favorite things is that everybody’s so supportive and encouraging. If you have something wrong with your belt, they’ll give you tools and equipment so you can fix it up, and they also give you advice,” said Smith, who joined competitive archery two years ago. “Another thing, probably, would be the competitive spirit that everybody has. Everybody wants to win, and you’re super competitive, but we still congratulate you when you outshoot someone.”
The supportive environment of the sport is evident throughout the event.
Victoria’s friend Kylee Koons fist bumps a sitting teammate as she walks by during the competition. Later, a male archer from the Reading Archery Club in Berks County encourages other competitors, including one who said she’s having a bad day on the shooting line and several other shooters who feel they aren’t performing their best. The word “supportive” is used often during interviews at the event.
Competitive archery is one of the fastest growing sports in Pennsylvania and especially in Lebanon County. The Palmyra Archers have grown from about five members to over 30 in just three years, according to James Koons, director of development, Pennsylvania Chapter of Scholastic 3D Archery. His two daughters are also members of the Palmyra Archers.
S3DA’s mission is to foster, educate and guide youth in indoor target archery, 3D archery (foam animal targets), and outdoor target archery as well as safe, ethical bowhunting practices and wildlife conservation. The goal of the S3DA program is to provide archery and bowhunting opportunities for young people in after-school settings as well as with archery-affiliated clubs and businesses in the community.
“I love that I got my kids into it early,” said James, Kylee’s dad. “It’s teaching them life skills. These friendships and what they’re doing here is unforgettable to them. And for many of these younger kids, this is the biggest thing they’re gonna do all year: To come to this event and look at the bleachers and all of the people in the crowd.”
Local club growth can be attributed to the recent success of Casey Kaufhold of Lancaster County, who won a bronze medal in the mixed-team archery event in Paris at the 2024 Summer Olympic games.
“She (Delia) came up to the field to practice on the far end and a bunch of the Olympic team members walked up and said, ‘Who is that girl? Who’s her coach?’ said James Koons. “She was shooting so well and her form was so on point. And so we talked to her mom and her mom actually sent her up to Lancaster Archery. They sent her to work with her (Kaufhold’s) coach. That’s how well Delia’s performing.”
The sport has really been embraced by young ladies locally. Most of the Palmyra Archers are girls while the ratio is around 60 percent female to 40 percent male across Pennsylvania and about 50-50 at the national and international levels, according to Koons.
Koons said he’s a “daughters’ dad” since both of his were participating in the state competition. Youths qualify for the state championships by competing at a regional tournament.
“My story, personally, my two daughters that are here shooting right now, we adopted them out of foster care. That’s how we came into archery because we were looking for something to do,” said Koons. “We went to Palmyra, they had a family day, just for something to do. And they wanted to try the bows.”
Both girls were, quite frankly, bullish for the bull’s eye when they picked up their bows that day.
“They kept hitting the center and grouping. And so someone said, ‘Wow, do they shoot?’ And we’re like, ‘We don’t know,’ said Koons. “They were still in foster care, they were very new. But what happened with archery was they joined this massive family and it showed them what the family dynamic is like on a large scale.”
Frank believes competitive archery is well-balanced via gender and age because it has broad appeal as a sport that requires an array of skills beyond those that mostly rely on physicality.
“It’s interesting because first off with archery, you don’t have to be the biggest person. You don’t have to be the fastest person or the strongest person to compete in this. We have kids as young as 9 years old. We even have kids younger than that at our club that shoot,” said Frank. “So you don’t have to be an athletic person to do it. I mean, athletics are involved, but that’s not the primary thing.”
All of the shooting for this competition was indoors for participants ages 8-18. Some archers were using what’s called an Olympic recurve bow while others, like Smith, were shooting barebow, which is exactly as it sounds: a bare bow.
“I shoot a barebow. It is just like the Olympic (recurve) but without the sights and stabilizer bars and stuff,” said Smith, who answered yes when asked if that bow is harder to use than the recurve. “So basically I’m just using the tip of the arrow and my shell to shoot it. With sights, you can adjust where it is so you can come back to the same anchor point every time. But for a barebow you would have to use what we call your crawl, which is your positioning, your hand positioning on the string.”
Both Frank and Victoria say they’ve received so much joy from archery shooting. A bonus for Victoria is a collegiate shooting scholarship awaits her when she attends Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio, this fall.
“A lot of people don’t realize that there are colleges that offer scholarships for the shooting sports too,” says Frank. “And overall, I mean this has been a fabulous program. My daughter loves it. We’ve really grown to love it too. Despite her graduating this year and aging out of the S3DA program, my wife and I are going to continue to be involved and keep coaching and helping out.”
Like father, like daughter, when it comes to competitive archery.
“it’s definitely brought a lot of joy and people into my life that I think will be with me forever,” said Victoria, “and it’s brought a lot of memories that I am very much taking with me to college and later on in my life.”
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