We did not actually award any prizes at Saturday's shooting sports event, but we did start keeping score and taking our target practice a bit more seriously. That's because this isn't exactly new to most of them anymore. It's the 2nd annual spring event, plus we got to shoot at Garrison in the Fall as well.
I took an informal poll and it was pretty split between kids who prefer the BB-gun range and those who kept coming back to the archery range. I know my son Colin had to be dragged away from the bow, because he kept trying to add to his already impressive scores. But Leo Johansen stayed on the opposite side enjoying the plink/plink sounds of BB's hitting pie tins or the sound of them tearing through the paper targets. It was a lot less crowded than in the fall too, so kids got plenty of turns and we had time to do the math in Archery. 10 is the inner yellow circle a true bullseye, 9 is the next yellow, 8 is the inner red, etc. You add up 6 shots and get a score. We aimed to score our top 2 rounds and see who could beat their personal highs throughout the day to get the best average. Colin shot 7 rounds and was at one point bragging about how he was better than me. He was top among the kids with a 39 and a 33 pt round: 36 avg. I got him in the end though with a 42/38 or 40pt avg. William Volvnik was also sticking around a lot. He did 5 rounds with a two rounds at 28 each. Andrew Phillips got a true bullseye once and averaged a 23. Trey DeGulis got the 2nd-highest single round score to end his day with a 29, that was double his previous effort. Likewise, Patch finished strong with a 28 which was far above his earlier best of 11. They got it with repetition. Even the little guys steadily improved. Lucy started with an 8 and wound up with a 19.5 avg with a farther target by the end of the day. Hunter started with a 7 and climbed to a 13 avg. Even the ones who weren't interested in scoring got a great feeling of pride when they hit the target on their own without adult help. I'm not sure we'll continue doing this in the spring since the attendance was somewhat low, but I'm looking forward to opening the ranges again during fall camping.
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