Story and photos by Eric Fowler
Archery does not discriminate.
To succeed, you don’t have to be the tallest, fastest or strongest. To shoot well, you just have to focus, refine your technique and practice. Or, you can just shoot for fun and not worry about how many bullseyes you hit.
Those aspects are what have made the National Archery in the Schools Program so successful and popular among participants — now 23.5 million and counting — and instructors since it began in 2002.
Our School Sport
Mater Dei Academy, a parochial school in Omaha with approximately 120 students from grades K through 12, has no team sports programs. Except archery. Nearly every student from fourth grade and up participates, and this tradition grows every year.
“It’s our school sport,” said Sara Cerise, a senior. “Our school has been doing this for a very long time. I like to do my teachers proud. It’s a lot of fun, too.”
Mater Dei was one of the first schools to sign up for NASP. It doesn’t have the budget to travel to weekend tournaments. Instead, the school focuses on one tournament: The State Tournament. This competition, hosted in Lincoln each March, draws an ever-increasing number of participants. In 2025, the event drew more than 700 archers from 33 schools, a big jump from the 100 who participated in the first state tournament in 2006.
This year, Mater Dei brought about 80 students to state, where its high school team won its 10th title to go with another six runner-up finishes. Their elementary and middle school teams also have two state titles and six runner-up finishes combined. When possible, the high school team travels to the Eastern National Tournament. This year, it placed 84th out of 265 teams.
“A lot of these little low budget schools, they don’t get a chance to really go out and make a name for themselves in sports and stuff,” said senior Michael Geckle, who shot his personal best of 293 out of 300 to finish 25th among 2,554 high school boys at the national tournament. “Archery, they can kind of resort to and become famous like we did.
“And it gives everyone a good chance to work as a team because in other sports, it’s mainly one position as the star of the show. So as a team here, you can really uplift each other and encourage the entire school to bring their game up.”
Bishop Mark Pivarunas, a bowhunter himself, was already teaching archery to Mater Dei students with a hodge-podge of sighted bows when the school joined NASP. The basic NASP equipment, and having the students shoot instinctively, simplified things and made it challenging as well. “For me, I enjoy the children getting better and better and feeling a sense of self-accomplishment,” Pivarunas said.
Students practice daily in the church basement. Girls in the boarding program have a target range outside of their dorm. “If you want to be really good, you’ve got to practice a lot,” Pivarunas said. “And if you want to be the best, you’ve got to practice even more. And they do. They really put their minds and hearts into it.”
That, he said, will carry over later in their lives. “If you put your mind to it and you work at something hard enough, you can be good at whatever you do.”
“Archery, in general, has taught me to be disciplined,” Cerise said, “[to] use your time well, and you got to really work for your goals. It’s not just going to happen. You got to work for it.”
The Yorkshire Homeschool Archers
The Yorkshire Homeschool Archers is one of several teams of homeschooled youths that participate in NASP. Last year, their second in the program, they had 23 students from York and the surrounding communities participate, with more interested in joining next year.
“One of the things we’re trying to do is build this so kids who are looking for something to do and needing something to do can have a positive place to come,” said Charla Stark, one of the parents who serves as a coach on the team. “They can jump right into it. You can come from having never picked up a bow before to shooting with hundreds of archers on the line at state
“Whatever you want to make of the sport, you can make it. If you want to just have fun and make it recreational, you can do that. There’s no pressure on you. But if you want to succeed and go on to further things, you can do that, too.”
The Yorkshire coaches appreciate the fact that NASP caters to everyone, no matter their abilities or strengths, and that it has both individual and team aspects. “And there’s no running and no weightlifting,” said Caitlynn Howard, another parent and coach on the team.
Yorkshire fifth grader Kemper Marquart hadn’t shot a bow prior to NASP but thought he would be good at it. After just a few weeks of practice, he was and has since won a few medals and trophies at area shoots. What he enjoys about the program is simple: “I like how when I pull back the bow, I can make the arrow go where I want it to,” he said.
A Family of Archers
Milford is one of several schools in Nebraska that is all-in on NASP, regularly placing at state and qualifying for nationals. When she was in eighth grade, Natalie Nutzman found immediate success in her first year of NASP, finishing third among middle school girls in the state tournament. The following year, she won the state girls title as a high school freshman despite having fallen and injuring her elbow. That injury, however, led to nerve damage in her hand that didn’t appear until she went to the national tournament that same year. At full draw, she was in extreme pain.
“I was actually really bummed because I didn’t want to give up this sport that I loved,” Nutzman said.
Worried she wouldn’t be able to find a way to keep shooting, her coach and coaches from other teams helped her find the answer in a mouth tab. Rather than pull the bowstring back with her fingers, she bites a tab attached to the string, releasing the arrow by relaxing her bite.
She was initially disappointed when she didn’t fare as well at state the following year. “When I got home, I had to just take a second and be like, ‘Wait, I’m the only one that does this in the state. Why am I bummed about 15th?” she said, adding she did better this year and hopes to improve more as a senior.
Getting to know her teammates and people from other teams is something she always enjoys. “It’s weird because we come from different backgrounds, and you just meet all of these amazing people that you wouldn’t have met otherwise. It just becomes a family,” she said.
From the Line to the Stand
One of the goals of NASP is to increase participation in the shooting sports. That has certainly happened since the program began in 2002: Participation in archery hunting and target shooting has grown from 7 million to 19 million.
While it’s not implicitly stated — hunting doesn’t even garner a mention in the curriculum — another goal of NASP was to increase participation in bowhunting. That is why in most cases the program is coordinated by state wildlife agencies. The connection has still happened, though, as the current count of 3.7 million bowhunters is a 23 percent increase from 2000.
Silas McDaniel of Lincoln is one of those new bowhunters. The first time he picked up a bow was in sixth-grade physical education class at Pound Middle School in Lincoln. That same year, he visited the NASP booth at the Nebraska Deer and Game Expo and shot 3D targets.
That, and the urging of a classmate and fellow NASP participant, piqued his interest not only in archery, but also bowhunting, something that no one in his family did. His father, Brendan, bought Silas a bow and the teenager kept shooting during the summer, passed his hunter education class and joined Pound’s after-school NASP club in seventh grade. That fall, he signed up for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission Youth Mentor Hunt Program. He has since harvested three deer and a turkey with his bow.
“I like the feeling after you get a deer or a turkey,” said Silas, now a freshman. “And I like just sitting in the tree and watching wildlife do its thing.”
Silas credits NASP for his interest in archery. His father credits both programs for his. “Between NASP and the mentor program, it has opened the door for me,” Brendan said. “I own a bow now, and Silas and I will go out and we’ll hunt together. Very quickly it turned into something that was a way for him and I to connect. It’s just such an amazing experience.”
While hunting was left out of the NASP curriculum by design, with the hope that more schools would participate, efforts are underway to improve the connection, including the addition of a 3D target competition at tournaments in recent years.
But even if participants only shoot in PE class and never shoot again, the National Archery in the Schools Program has been a tremendous success and continues to grow each year.
Simply getting youths involved in the sport was the goal, said Aaron Hershberger, Outdoor Skills Education supervisor and former coordinator of NASP in Nebraska.
“It’s still kind of surprising to folks that we harnessed the attraction in the flight of the arrow into a school curriculum taught during the school day,” Hershberger said.
NASP by the Numbers
- 23.5 million students in more than 9,500 schools across the U.S. have participated since 2002
- 66 percent were first-time archers
- 105,000 educators have been trained
- Half of participants are female, and half male
- $4 million in scholarships have been awarded to students
- Credited, in part, for an increase in archery participation from 7 million to 19.2 million
NASP History and Curriculum
NASP began in Kentucky in 2002 and quickly grew to include 20 states by the time the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission launched its program in 2005 with 32 schools adding archery to their curriculum. During the past school year, 350 schools and homeschooled groups and 33,000 students participated in Nebraska.
In most schools, NASP is simply 10 hours of the curriculum in physical education or other classes, taught by teachers who have been certified as Basic Archery Instructors. Game and Parks provides equipment at a reduced cost thanks to national grants.
Everyone in the country uses the same Genesis compound bow and aluminum Easton arrows, an aspect that is key for those teaching the class. “I don’t want to have to give Suzie a different bow than Johnny, and have to know how both of those bows work and how to adjust both of those bows,” said Megan Price, hunting and shooting sports outreach coordinator at Game and Parks. “They need something that’s easy and consistent.”
For students, not having to compete against others using pricey bows with sights, stabilizers or other accessories common in both hunting and target bows simplifies the sport as well. “They are all on the same playing field, so it makes it about your technique and not the extras,” Price said.
Perfecting that technique can quickly improve scores, boosting a student’s confidence. That, according to annual surveys of students who participate in the basic program, produces benefits beyond shooting: Students say they work harder and have better focus in school, and feel more connected to their school. Outside of class, they are more confident.
At about 10 percent of the schools, NASP doesn’t end when the PE bell rings. Students who wish to do so can shoot competitively, often in clubs that meet before or after school. In some cases, the same teachers who deliver the program in class lead the competitive program. In others, dedicated volunteer instructors do so.
Archers can compete at local and regional tournaments hosted nearly every weekend starting in January and leading up to the Nebraska state tournament, held in Lincoln each March. Any team or individual from a NASP school can participate in the state tournament.
Each year, several teams and individuals from Nebraska advance to one of two national tournaments, the Western National in Utah and the Eastern Nationals in Louisville, Kentucky. The latter drew 15,000 archers in 2025, making it the largest archery tournament in the world.
How to Get NASP in Your School
Grants from state and national organizations help defray much of the cost of equipment needed to start a program. The first 12 schools to submit an application are guaranteed to receive a kit, which includes 13 bows, 5 targets, arrows, an arrow curtain and a repair kit. If more than 12 apply to join the program, staff will work to find funding to keep the cost of additional kits down.
Game and Parks staff will also travel to new schools to train teachers and help them secure the required Basic Archery Instructor certification.
For more information, contact Megan Price at Megan.Price@Nebraska.gov or 402-471-6133.