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Pelion Elementary School archery team wins national championship title

The team of 23 won both the bullseye and 3D national titles.

PELION, S.C. — Lexington County is now home to 4th and 5th grade national champions. 

The Pelion Elementary school archery team won first place in the National Archery in Schools Program Open Championship this past weekend. 

Meaning, they took on and beat teams in Ohio, Missouri and Kentucky. 

The competition was held in Louisville, Kentucky and the team won both the bullseye and 3D national titles, scoring 3,197 in bullseye and 1,623 in 3D.

Bullseye is when archers shoot for the target, and 3D archery is when archers shoot at a 3 dimensional target that looks like an animal.

Their coach, Colby Coulter, is overwhelmed reflecting on their success.

"After eight months of just grinding, hard work and practicing and all the emotions that go along with it, for me it was a whole lot of sitting in silence because I just, I really couldn't believe it," Coulter said.

The program started five years ago competing just for fun.

"I hopped on YouTube and Google and everything that I could to learn about archery cause it wasn't something that I ever did growing up and just took the things that I learned off line and started implementing them in practice," Coulter said.

Now, students like Paisley Hinkle are wearing gold. 

"The emotions were definitely excited. I was very excited to be there since this was my first year," Paisley Hinkle, 4th grade archer said. "I really like it because maybe if I'm having a bad day or something's not going good, every time I pick up the bow and I'm behind it and I have an arrow fully drawn I'm just focusing on my target and nothing else."

The team and parents will celebrate with a pool party next month.

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