At home on the range

Ever since Average Joes Archery started a youth league in 2009, owners Joe and Michelle Caminati have been scrambling to keep up. When the Coon Rapids range reached its capacity of 50 shooters, they started a second league, and that also nearly filled.

"It's been growing exponentially," Joe Caminati said.

And not just in his shop. Archery is booming among Minnesota youth.

"This [school] year, 172,000 kids shot archery," said Kraig Kiger, Shooting Sports Programs administrator for the Minnesota DNR. To put that in perspective, 54,000 Minnesota youth played hockey, and 75,000 played soccer.

In 2005, the DNR launched its Archery in the Schools program. It started with 50 schools, and each year it adds more, half in the metro area and half outstate. This year, 408 schools participated, with an accompanying Archery in the Parks program adding another 60 sites. The high school state tournament, held at the end of March, drew 998 shooters, two short of its capacity. Organizers are pondering changes in the format for next year to accommodate more participants, Kiger said.

The blockbuster success of "The Hunger Games" has propelled a boom in archery among the fans of its protagonist, a teenager named Katniss whose prowess with a bow and arrow are her signature. (And key to her survival.) But as trends go, Minnesota was way ahead of the curve this time.

"I've read about how it supposedly has resulted in a surge of interest elsewhere, but the movie's not spurring it on here because the kids already were interested in it," said Mark Shambaugh, co-owner of Midwest Archery in St. Michael. "This has been going on here for quite a few years."

"Katniss is soooo cool!" Leilani Schuppan, 11, said as she prepared to start shooting in one of the Average Joes Archery leagues on a recent Monday evening.

Fellow shooter Maddy Kowalczyk is a veteran archer. The 14-year-old picked up her first bow when she was 5.

"I love it," she said during a break in what would turn out to be a personal-best score in the league. She got started because her father liked to shoot. "It rubbed off on me from him," she said.

Unlike say, a bowling league, where everyone competes at once, the archery league is flexible. Participants can come when they want. They shoot 60 arrows (plus up to 10 practice shots), record their score and go home. In competitions, there's the extra pressure of a time limit, but the league participants often take breaks to rest, adjust their equipment, get tips from the store's staff -- and eat pizza.

"I like that it's an individual sport, that you can do it by yourself," said Calleigh Schuppan, 13, Leilani's sister. The two of them shot in adjacent lanes but stayed focused on their individual business to the point that Leilani finished about 10 minutes sooner.

Kiger cited several factors in archery's popularity spurt. For starters, it dovetails with the fitness industry's focus on "lifetime sports" in which participation continues into adulthood.

"I was a big football guy, but I haven't played football once since I got out of school," he said. "I can shoot every day, if I want to."

It's also one of the few sports in which gender is not a factor. "Boys and girls compete side-by-side," he said.

Positive reinforcement is another draw. It's fairly easy to pick up the basics; with just a couple of practice sessions, even the rawest beginner usually can hit at least the outer circles of the target on the shortest part of the range, which is 10 yards, Caminati said. But if you want to become a top-ranked competitive shooter, you can spend years mastering the technique.

Rachel Jones, 14, is one of those who has progressed quickly. "I started shooting last summer at 10 yards and got a bunch of zeros" after completely missing the target, she said. Now she's regularly posting league scores in the 260s out of a possible 300 points.

Modern-day bow technology also helps youngsters. Compound bows, which use a series of cams and pulley-like wheels to reduce the strength needed to pull back the string, can be adjusted to as little as 7 pounds of draw force. (Adults use 40 to 60 pounds.)

And don't forget the aesthetics. Hunters still can buy camouflage bows, but that's just the tip of the color spectrum. Asked why she had picked her particular bow, 10-year-old Hannah Dickson replied matter-of-factly, "Because it's pink."

A used bow costs $100 to $150, while new ones start around $300. On the other end, "the sky's the limit," Caminati said. It's not unusual for a high-level competitive shooter to invest $2,000.

"A lot of kids just rent gear," he said. In his shop, the rental fee is $11 for a two-hour range session or $40 for one of the 10-week leagues.

"We want to make it easy for kids to try this," he said. "They're the future of our sport."