Equipment

If you do NOT have equipment – we have bows, arrows, and gear for you to use at practice! For those who already have equipment, bring them to your first practice for inspection.

As your youth progress, you will likely want to get them their own gear. Please speak with a coach for recommendations. Do NOT purchase gear from Amazon – the market there is VERY sketchy and some of products are dangerous to use! Purchasing your own equipment is highly encouraged – it allows your athlete to:

• customize their gear for their body and shooting style,
• makes time for warm-ups and gear inspection at practice,
• keep up their excitement for the sport, and
• practice throughout the week, which will speed up their skills acquisition and re-enforce the learning that occurs with their instructors!

JOAD

JOAD is the USA Archery’s youth program and runs year-long with both indoor and outdoor seasons. JOAD allows youth to earn pins based on their improvement in archery measured by archery discipline, score, and distance to target. Youth can earn new awards through “pin shoots”, a special scored practice that simulates a tournament in style and execution. We will hold pin shoots once every month on the last practice of the month, unless otherwise announced. See the awards requirements here.

JOAD practices will be split in a way that provides adequate instructor supervision. For “Yeoman” class youth (through the calendar year of their 9th birthday), we will need a higher ratio of instructors to archers (3:1 for 7 years old and under, 6:1 for 8-9 years old). Please consider becoming an instructor if you have a youth in these age groups!

NASP

NASP (National Archery in the Schools) program is centered around the school year and will begin in August. Practices will be held at municipal rec centers within the team boundaries and discussions are ongoing with several organizations.

Registration is likely to be done through their portals and links will be provided here in July for families to access.

For more information on NASP, see https://www.naspschools.org/magic-of-nasp/

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JOAD & NASP

JOAD (Junior Olympic Archery Development) is a year-round program by USA Archery, the US Olympic body for archery. They support multiple disciplines – traditional, barebow, recurve, compound – and want to foster young archers to become Olympic-level competitors. Competitions are held nationwide, year-round, indoor and outdoor, and anyone can compete at most events.

NASP (National Archery in the Schools Program) was developed by the Kentucky Conservation Department (then spread from there) and is focused on generating more archers in general, not necessarily “sport”/competitive archers. The equipment you can use in NASP is limited to one bow (the Genesis) and one arrow type (Easton 1820) so competitions aren’t won by whoever has the best gear. NASP has a rigid competition hierarchy – local, state, national – and all are held indoors. They have both “target” and “3D” (foam animal target) divisions.

JOAD participants do not have to enroll in the NASP program and vice versa. JOAD is year-round so overlaps with NASP tournament season (third & fourth semester). During that time, NASP tournaments will take priority for NASP participants. Youth choosing to shoot exclusively equipment that is not NASP-approved – recurve, barebow, compound (beyond basic), i.e. “JOAD disciplines” – during the school year can attend NASP practices but will be encouraged to participate in JOAD tournaments ad hoc or with fellow teammates, as situations allow.

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