On April 3rd and 4th the 10th annual Tri-County 4-H Statewide Invitational took place at the Washington County Fair Park, West bend. The events were air rifle, Wildlife ecology and archery (with the vast majority of youth participating in the archery events).
The 4H has an outstanding youth shooting sports program. See the video at the link provided (scroll down until you see " view 4-H shooting sports video")
http://www.4-hshootingsports.org/ 14 year old Colleen competed in the archery events. I met Colleen last year when I took my broadhead collection to a 4H shooting sports night at the Watertown Archers shooting lanes. During this year's shooting sports events, Colleen was going to be shooting a reflex deflex longbow but needed arrows for this 28 pound bow. We selected some carbon express shafts 20/40 Lbs spined shafts and she picked the nock and fletching colors for her dozen arrows.
I left 3 shafts unfletched so we could do some bare shaft testing to establish the correct cut length for the arrows. After a trip to the Watertown archers indoor range and a few trips by Colleen to my place to get her set up, we learned the shafts were still too stiff for her set up. We ended up using 300 grain tips to get the bare shafts to fly well.
In the end, she won the intermediate class (12-14 year olds), Longbow division where she competed against both boys and girls. Archers shot at distances of 10 and 15 yards at both bulleyes and animal targets. Congrats to Colleen for winning and enjoying archery and thanks to the Watertown archers and the 4H for their contribution to youth archery. She will be practicing throughout the summer and competing again at Beloit in August.