CRANE, Mo. — Tracy Flood had her trusty whistle in hand, pointing out how the kids tend to drag in sometimes.
It’s hard to blame them with the 6:30 a.m. start times for archery practice, but it doesn’t take much to get them up this week.
Crane is one of many schools across the state that will flock to Branson this weekend for the Missouri National Archery in Schools Program (MoNASP) ninth annual state tournament. With around 2,500 participants, it will be the largest meet that any Crane student will have competed at this year.
“Even those that have been there year after year have the panic and that nervousness,” said Flood. “You have to take them aside and tell them not to worry about their surroundings and just do what they know how to do.”
Crane took just 19 students to state in 2009. This year, they began with 68, which made cuts necessary to get the group down to 24 for each division, high school and junior high.
Freshman Brooke Hultz has seen the scale of the tournament first-hand as her two older sisters, Abby and Christa, competed while she came up through elementary and middle school. Her father is also an assistant coach.
“They’re pretty open with that if they see you’re doing something wrong, they’ll come up and say: ‘Hey, you need to fix this,” Hultz said.
She got her first bow when she was six and eventually began practicing rifle as well. She hunts as well, but said she can’t stay quiet long enough to do so with a bow.
In practice, she lets her arrows talk. There are 11 steps to run through every time one is fired in Flood’s program. Nearly every student develops a bad habit in their form with that much repetition and they can take countless more hours to break.
“She’s here and does her time, works hard, gets her frustrations, steps away, comes back, and tries to work through them,” said Flood.
Frustrations aside, Hultz has done this long enough to know that the routine is everything.
“Especially if you don’t practice over the summer,” she said. “I didn’t practice over the summer and I was shooting 280’s last year. I came back and wasn’t even close.”
“I guess I’ve done it so many times that I don’t need to go through the steps anymore… it’s just muscle memory.”
Now she can put that memory to the test on a state level for the first time as a high schooler.
