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Local archery club opens with safety in mind

The Kamsack River Valley Archery Club has reopened with new COVID-safe plans for this year’s archery season and is inviting anyone aged 5 to 85+ to join them.
Scott Green
Scott Green is masked up and sanitized for COVID while coaching Edmond Nault on how to shoot a compound bow at their open house on October 7.

The Kamsack River Valley Archery Club has reopened with new COVID-safe plans for this year’s archery season and is inviting anyone aged 5 to 85+ to join them.

“I was in a club over the years in Estevan and thought there wasn’t enough for the kids to do up here and figured they would enjoy the sport of archery,” says Scott Green, club volunteer. “Get them off the street and out of the house!”

The Sask Archery Association has given the club the go-ahead with COVID rules to follow to ensure the safety of all participants. They will be operating out of the Veregin Rink to do the archery club as a winter activity. Last year there were 25 members and the club organizers are optimistic that this year they will continue to see a rise in numbers.

“We will be sanitizing our equipment and our targets are set up 9 feet apart, it is a COVID safe activity,” says Green. “For the first bit, we will provide the equipment for anyone who wants to join us but eventually we would want them to have their own archery equipment. It’s a very COVID friendly sport, it’s non contact, you’re on your own. If there’s a sport out there that’s not going to get you with COVID it would be this one.”  

As a non-profit organization, the club has to fundraise and has been successfully hosting fundraisers in the Veregin Rink, the most recent of which raised $1000 and will help repair the roof.

“We took over the Veregin Rink to do the archery club and they gave us the rink to use as a winter facility,” says Green. Green and his girlfriend Rhonda have been renovating the building, including building a new kitchen for the wing night fundraisers they have hosted drawing guests from Yorkton to Foam Lake, Benito and Swan River. “We are very fortunate to have all of that for fundraising, we have upgraded the facility by insulating the door and we have been trying to find the funding to spray foam insulate the roof. When it’s -22 outside we just can’t heat the building and it’s too cold to shoot so we are down for two weeks. We want to use the facility year round.” 

The club will host a junior Olympic program for youth 5 to 21 teaching club members to shoot at different distances and score off targets.

“The club’s youngest archery student was a little girl shooting with her parents, she was 3 years old,” says Green. “It’s throwing that at the kids, they’ll pick up some hunting skills.

Archery, it hones your hunting skills. You’ll learn the proper kill zones on an animal, hand eye coordination and the concentration it takes for archery.”  

“It’s about teaching the kids, coaching the kids, the looks on their faces, when they’re having fun!”  

Anyone is invited to watch the club Facebook page, or come out and see what archery is like.