The Archery Rocks honored their veteran marksmen Feb. 21, celebrating a senior class that spent hundreds of hours on the range training steady hands into a lasting legacy.
For many of the seniors, archery started as simple curiosity and slowly grew into something much bigger.
Liam Kersting has been doing archery for eight years. His grade school offered it, and Kersting was eager to try something new. It didn’t take long for him to fall in love with shooting arrows at a target.
Kersting is not planning to take the college route; he will attend Jefferson Community & Technical College to become an electrician. Unfortunately, Kersting does not plan to continue archery after high school but will continue hunting with the skills he learned from Trinity. “I’ll miss the bonding moments with my brother,” he said, but he will never truly lose his brothers. There are some big life lessons you can learn from archery: “Never rush into life, always take your time and make sure you know how to do it.” Kersting’s wisdom will rub off on the younger archers and help set the building blocks for the future of the program.
Like Kersting, Dane Parsons also began archery simply wanting to try something new.
“Just wanted to be able to shoot a bow.” Seven years later, Parsons is leaving the Archery Rocks with far more than just shooting experience. Parsons will attend the University of Louisville and plans to become a chemist, but like Kersting, he will not continue archery after high school. While he will no longer be shooting with the friends he made, Parsons plans to stay in touch with them. “Never give up and keep pushing yourself always to be the best.”
While some seniors are closing the chapter on archery completely, others are still deciding what their future with the sport may look like.
Nolan Waggoner started his archery journey at Christian Academy of Louisville in sixth grade. “It was just a thing to pass time in the winter.” Before archery, Waggoner did gymnastics but stopped because it was too time-consuming. After high school, Waggoner will attend Miami University in Ohio, and he is still on the fence about continuing archery at the next level.
For Waggoner, archery became more than just a winter activity.
Archery helped him thrive. He came into Trinity knowing only one person, and now he is leaving with brothers. “I’ll miss the friends I made. A lot of them I got really close with, especially after four years of doing archery. They’re probably my closest friends.”
Together, this senior class leaves behind not only scores and experience, but a legacy of patience, perseverance and brotherhood that will carry on with the next generation of Archery Rocks.
