A 3D archery league in Fox Township
On Wednesday, a 3D archery league at Fox Township Sportsman Club started its shooting season.
The league first began in 1986 when it was created by a group of five men, Randy Gradizzi, Tony Greenawalt, Paul Holtzear, Mike Tamburlin, and Ray Pollino. They came to the Sportsman’s Club meeting and asked for permission to add an archery league to the club. The club agreed and gave them the start-up money that they had asked for.
“We wanted to have archery at Fox,” Greenawalt said.
Four years later they began to shoot indoors as well as outdoor. However, the indoor began at McGule Contracting building and stayed there for ten years until they had gained enough money to build their very own building.
In the year 2000, the building was finally built and ready to be used. They started to shoot both an indoor league and an outdoor league. They decided they would shoot on Wednesdays to accommodate all the shooters.
Haybales were originally used as the targets that the archers would shoot at outdoors. However, as the 3D targets became more popular they switched to them a few years later. The 3D targets are hard plastic animal-shaped targets that can be shot at any distance. There are rings that hold different scores depending on where the arrow hits. The highest score is ten points. The distances from the targets are in yards and the furthest one on this course is 30 yards.
Some of the more unique targets that Fox Township has are alligators, lions, fish, and a velociraptor.
During the Wednesday shooting, they only have twenty-eight targets instead of thirty. But during major shoots, they will have thirty. On Wednesday nights, each person that competes can only have their highest score of 280 points.
The archers are split into teams by drawing names out of a hat for teams to be equal in skill.
“It is fun to shoot with the guys and splitting the teams the way we do lets everyone get to know each other,” Greenawalt said.
Other archers agreed that they are enjoying the league.
“We get excited for it to start up and we absolutely love it,” archer Dill Kepple said.