DALTON, Ga. — Valley Point Middle School seventh-grader Chase Stafford hasn’t been participating in archery for very long. In fact, it’s been less than a year. But in that time Stafford has accomplished more than a lot of more experienced archers. Recently, Stafford won the National Archery in the Schools Program state championship for the middle school division.

It’s a tremendous achievement for someone who just took up the sport to spend extra time with his friends. 

“All my friends were doing it and I thought it would be a fun thing to do,” Stafford said when asked what led him to sign up for the team. “I started it just to hang out with my friends after school.” 

“What’s really cool with Chase is he literally just started shooting a bow,” Valley Point coach Cord King said. “He started when we started our team in early November. We got him going from never shooting a bow before to winning the state title for middle school. That was in our fourth tournament we shot in. His first time out he shot a 222, then 265. At the regional shoot he shot a 283, then 294 at state. That’s crazy improvement.”

The maximum possible score for competition is 300. In order to score his 294 at state, Stafford hit 24 bull’s-eyes out of 30 shots. He credits the coaching he has received from King as the top reason for his rapid improvement.

“I feel he needs more recognition than he gets,” Stafford said. “He’s the one that really taught me how to shoot in such a short amount of time.”

Next up for Stafford is the NASP national tournament in May in Louisville, Ky. King said one thing that helps Stafford at tournaments is his mental approach and his ability to stay calm under pressure.

“A lot of it comes in with mastering a lot of the techniques,” King said. “In NASP there’s 11 techniques he has to work on, such as his stance, his bow-hand grip. When it comes down to shooting that well, it’s a mental aspect. He’s a very calm, cool and collected kid. He’s really good when he goes to a tournament, he becomes almost a new person because when he gets there he gets hyper focused. When he gets against all those other shooters, he’s able to go past that pressure and really calm down. A lot of people, it has the opposite effect. For him, he gets hyper focused.”

Stafford admitted there were some nerves at the state tournament, but he was able to overcome them and exceed his own expectations. 

“I was a little bit nervous because there were a whole bunch of people. It was a lot different compared to local tournaments,” he said. “I went in not really expecting to do super, super good. All I wanted to do was raise my score, but I ended up being state champion of the middle school league.”