Archery program’s popularity is on point
Sand Springs archers are shooting for a second-straight appearance at nationals.
If you think archery is a popular school sport these days – including in Sand Springs – you’d be right on target.
Through the National Archery in the Schools Program, more than 1.3 million students in grades 4-12 in more than 8,800 schools are taking part each year in curricular or competitive archery, the program’s website says.
Hundreds of them are doing so at Clyde Boyd Middle School, Charles Page High School and Garfield and Pratt elementary schools.
Gina Myers is in her third year of teaching archery at Clyde Boyd, where all of her classes are full, and there’s a waiting list.
Clyde Boyd Middle School archery teacher and coach Gina Myers (in black shirt) has a quick strategy session with members of the school’s archery team during the 2026 OKNASP Grand State tournament at Expo Square in Tulsa on Feb. 25. The team is waiting to hear whether its performance qualified it for nationals. Sharon Bishop-Baldwin/Sand Springs Line
“It’s literally blowing up,” she said. “I think we’ve probably got one of the biggest programs around, … just because we offer it as an elective.
“That is unique to Sand Springs,” Myers said. “Our administration saw that as a need, and now we have a waiting list.”
As sports go, archery is the great equalizer, Myers said.
“It draws kids from all corners of the school,” she said, explaining how a chess champion, a band member and a football player, for example – students who might not otherwise have a lot in common at school – can have a shared, common experience with a bow and arrow.
“Archery gives them a different level of confidence,” she said. “It teaches patience and focus and discipline. It teaches them to calm down and work under pressure, and it’s so good to see them excel.
“I’ll do anything I can do to get the kids off of the screen and outdoors.”
Archery also makes no distinction between genders, with girls and boys competing against one another, Myers said.
Gender equality has long been a feature of the sport, one of the first to allow women to compete in the Olympics, according to World Archery, the international federation for Olympic and Paralympic archery.
It was first an Olympic sport in 1900, with the first women’s event held at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis. American Matilde Howell took the first gold medal.
Jennifer Galloway says her son Ty has met some new friends thanks to his involvement with archery, but he’s gotten even more out of it than that.
“He loves the outdoors, and he loves sports, too, but this gives him that option where he can do both,” she said. “He’s really enjoyed that.”
She said she’s astonished by what her son can do.
“It’s amazing that they can even shoot these things with no sights, right? I mean, I don’t know how he does it,” she said. “It’s very impressive. He’s even got a bow for the house and a target, and he’s been practicing.”
Because the Sand Springs program began at the middle school, Clyde Boyd’s archers are generally more experienced than those at the high school, where the archery team is in its inaugural year.
In fact, the high school team is bused to Clyde Boyd to practice with the eighth-graders during seventh hour.
Myers recently took the middle school and high school teams to compete in the state tournament in Tulsa. More than 1,000 young archers aiming at more than 200 targets filled the lower level of the SageNet Center at Expo Square for two days.
Clyde Boyd Middle School archers (in dark gray shirts) take aim at their targets Feb. 25 during the 2026 OKNASP Grand State tournament at Expo Square in Tulsa. Sharon Bishop-Baldwin/Sand Springs Line
The 2026 OKNASP tournament offered two brackets – the more competitive Grand State division, in which Clyde Boyd archers competed, and the East Region Tier 2 State division, in which the high school team competed.
The maximum team score is 3,600; the maximum individual score is 300. Sixteen archers compete, with the top 12 individual scores – top four boys, top four girls and the next highest four – counting toward the team score.
The Clyde Boyd team scored 3,140 points, finishing 11th out of 30 teams and rising 11 spots in the rankings. Four students – Ty Galloway, Keaton Smith, Wesley Wilson and Maverick Zickefoose – recorded personal best individual scores.
The inaugural Clyde Boyd squad competed two years ago in the lower Tier 2 competition. The team qualified last year for Grand State, but the tournament was canceled because of a winter storm, so this was its first year to compete in the higher division.
In its bracket, the Charles Page team scored 3,011 points, finishing second out of 13 teams. Three high school students recorded personal best individual scores – Josie Grona, Evan Paschal and Kitty Bowman. And two Charles Page archers ranked in the top 10: freshman Jacob Cochran placed third, and freshman Kruz Berreth finished fourth.
Myers said Cochran shoots more than 1,000 arrows a day. And yes, he might have a sore arm on occasion, but he also has “one very accurate shot,” she said.
Sand Springs Public Schools’ youngest archers competed in the Tier 2 State tournament’s Elementary Division. Garfield STEAM Academy placed third with a score of 2132, and Pratt Elementary School placed seventh with a score of 1717.
The OKNASP Grand State tournament is a qualifying event for nationals, and Myers is now eagerly awaiting word on whether the Clyde Boyd team will qualify.
In only its second year, the team qualified for nationals last year, traveling to Sandy, Utah, in mid-April for the Western Nationals Tournament. Myers said that if the team qualifies this year, she wants to compete in the more competitive Eastern Nationals tournament in early May in Louisville, Kentucky.
“I want to go where the big dogs are to see what it looks like,” she said.
Myers definitely has a competitive spirit. But she also knows that the sport is only one part of the lessons she’s giving her students.
That’s why her classes participate in Modern Manners Mondays, where they learned to tip the servers who fed them at the Crescent Café before the state competition.
And it’s why they take part in Work Together Wednesdays, when Myers’ students work with and mentor younger students at the adjacent Pratt Elementary School.
It’s her way of giving back to a community that she says is so supportive of her and her students.
“I’m so thankful for the Sand Springs community and the help that continues to show up with a smile and does what it can to make the program successful,” she said.
The Clyde Boyd Middle School archery team placed 11th out of 30 teams in the 2026 OKNASP Grand State tournament at Expo Square in Tulsa on Feb. 25. Sharon Bishop-Baldwin/Sand Springs Line
In its inaugural year, the Charles Page High School archery team placed second out of 13 teams in the 2026 OKNASP East Region Tier 2 State tournament Feb. 25 at Expo Square in Tulsa. Photo courtesy Gina Myers
What they’re saying
A good number of the Clyde Boyd Middle School archers were more than willing to answer a reporter’s questions about what they think about archery, what it teaches them and how they got started.
Wesley Wilson, 7th grade, first-year archer
“I like it. A lot of my friends did it last year, and I just thought it would be cool to do it.”
“We can’t just run out there and start shooting. So it teaches us patience.”
Alexia Garcia, 7th grade, third-year archer
“All my friends are on the team, so it’s fun.”
Archery teaches her “to not give up and keep going, and it also makes people more mature about themselves.”
Canyon Carnahan, 8th grade, third-year archer
“It’s definitely fun. I like doing it. I’ve been doing archery for a long time” even before the class.
“It teaches you self-respect and patience. If you get frustrated, you should keep going; don’t give up.”
Julia Myers, 8th grade, third-year archer
“It takes pressure off of volleyball for me, so it’s just a fun sport to do in my free time.”
Ty Galloway, 7th grade, second-year archer
“I get to have fun with my friends and learn a lot of stuff about wildlife and stuff like that.”
“It teaches me self-control. You have to be able to calm yourself down. It also teaches me to respect other people.”
Rowdy Ash, 8th grade, second-year archer
“I think it’s pretty fun. I like it. My friends did it, so I just started doing it.”